


The Gift of the Dreen

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Girl Genius (Webcomic)
Genre: Asexual Character, Bisexual Male Character, F/F, Lesbian Character, Master Payne's Circus of Adventure, Other Character and Relationship Tags To Be Added, Self-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2019-08-09 10:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 96,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16448273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Dreen-Gift: a term for supposed psychics that pop out throughout history, who know things, whether past, present, or future, that they have no way of knowing.They are so called because they are "delivered" by Dreen to where they are needed, and if they go a step too far and try to give more information than the Dreen would like, one shows up to scare them back into silence.The reality is that Dreen-gifts are people from other dimensions, including ours, who have read parts of the story before.There's a world where the primary story of Europa is that of Andronicus and Euphrosynia, with barely a footnote for Agatha's existence, but a delightfully torrid romance inside.There's a world where Ht'Rok-din was the main villain in a video game that, as it turned out, one could not successfully win bydefeatinghim, only by keeping him from going past the immediate countryside surrounding Mechanicsburg.There's a world where the first jagers were the enemy supersoldiers in a highly-acclaimed Image comic.And so on.Now, it's time for a Dreen-Gift in the timeline we know, the story we're familiar with, and the cast that we love.





	1. The Oracle

_Dreen Gift (alt. Dreen-Gift, Dreen-gift, Dreen gift) n. and adj._

_A Dreen-Gift is a person of otherworldly origin sent to the world with knowledge of the past, present, and future that can be used to shape the world’s fate. They are human, insofar as anyone can tell, withsome small abilities given to them by the Dreen to protect them from harm. Dreen-Gifts are historically rare, and when there is more than one, they often work at cross-purposes. They have also historically been viewed as angels, demons, ghosts, or, most commonly, psychics and fortunetellers._

_The goal of the Dreen in providing these Gifts to the world is unclear. In 1693, the Dreen-Gift of the pseudonym Timothea, apprentice to Van Rijn prior to the disappearances of both, suggested that the Dreen-Gifts were an experiment by the Dreen on the effects of meddling in the timeline._

_Noted abilities of Dreen-Gifts include quantum destabilization (often uncontrolled), minor abilities in what appear to be genuine psychic fields of study, an acute ability to identify key players and events before their role in international politics is revealed to the wider world or even to themselves, and heightened skills in identifying unexpected or uncommon cause-and-effect relationships._

_The last known Dreen-Gift was introduced in 1845 at the age of 28, and died under one of the Other’s boulders in 1867. He was, at the time, a shopkeeper in Mechanicsburg._

o.o.o.o.o

They found her sitting motionless against a tree, just months after losing Tinka.

She was young. She did not speak Romanian. She was oddly dressed. She was tired and hungry and freezing and very near dehydration. She avoided answering about many things, and explained simply that she had been separated from her family and had no way home. She asked to come with them.

They were more than familiar with young women who shied away from questions and wanted to run away with the circus.

They took her.

o.o.o.o.o

“What do we call you?” Master Payne asked, after they’d gotten her inside a wagon and bundled up in a warm blanket, a cup of hot cider in her hands and some foodstuffs on the table.

She stared at the grains in the wood with hollow eyes, unseeing of what was there and caught up in a memory. It took several long moments before she answered.

“I don’t want to go by my old name,” she said. She hunched closer in on herself. “I’ve gone by Phoenix, before. Many names, really, but that’s the most consistent.”

“It would make a good stage name,” he said. “But I’ve a feeling it’s not quite meant for daily use, is it?”

She shrugged. She tensed and stilled under the hand that Marie put on her shoulder in an attempt at comfort, and then forcibly, visibly relaxed. “You can call me Nixy. Other people have. Or… Alice, I suppose.”

“Alice?”

“I’m trapped in a Wonderland,” she said, and then giggled. It was not a happy noise. It was desperate, and a little despairing. “No, you wouldn’t have that here. Would you? It’s English, at least, so that’s probably not very popular, and…”

She trailed off, staring at the table again, eyes growing distant as the smile slid from her face.

“Miss?” Payne prompted.

She closed her eyes, looking pained, and then shook her head. “Sorry. I’m… not okay. I’m also a little odd, by my home’s standards. Very odd, sometimes. I won’t be very useful until I learn things, either.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Payne knew he wasn’t showing his shock, but he was certainly feeling it. The Countess was probably feeling the same way.

“I know I don’t look it,” she said, with a small laugh. “Um, I got mistaken for a teenager a lot at work, even though I got my bachelor’s degree a year ago.”

“A degree?” Marie prodded. “In what?”

“Nothing useful here,” the girl said.

“What did you do for work?” Payne asked.

She shrugged. “Coffee shop. But the systems are, uh, different enough from what probably shows up in your path that I don’t think _that’ll_ be useful either.”

She was silent for a moment, sipping her cider, and then, “I’m not strong. I’m not particularly clever compared to some of the folks you have here, and I’m not going to be able to figure out the machines you use without coaching. Any skills I have in literary analysis and such are useless since everything you do is probably in Romanian, which I obviously don’t know, and all my other knowledge is useless without the tools to implement it properly. I’m a mediocre singer and my dancing isn’t compatible with what you show, and my art skills aren’t worth mentioning. I can’t fight at all. I get twitchy around animals and I freak out about hygiene and germs. But I can learn things. If you give me a task I can do, I’m willing to do it for hours upon hours if I know it’s for a good reason. I like routines, I like knowing I’m good at something, and I like knowing I’m not the load. If you give me a way to help, I will.”

It was more than she’d said so far.

It was also an interesting perspective to have on a new addition to the company.

“So your argument is that you think your useless, but you’re willing to _become_ useful,” Marie summarized.

(There was a lot to unpack there. They’d have time for that later.)

She curled in on herself. “Pretty much.”

Payne and Marie shared a look.

“It’s late,” Marie said. “So, Alice Nixy, then? Or Alice Phoenix?”

“The first, I think,” she said. She was mumbling. She sounded very tired. She did not look up.

Marie put a careful arm around Alice’s shoulders. “Let’s get you to bed. I think Olga has a spare bunk, and she’s got enough English under her belt to help if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Alice said. She finished the last of her cider, stood up, and let the Countess escort her to Olga’s wagon.

Tension hung in the air like static before a storm when Marie returned. Payne waited until she closed the door and took a seat herself.

“Something’s odd about that girl,” he said.

“No odder than the average Spark we take on,” Marie said. “But not actually a Spark, I think.”

“No,” Payne agreed. “I don’t think she’s a danger to us, but… we’ll have to keep an eye on her.”

Across the campground, a pair of metal eyes slid open, and a card sat face-up on the table.

A featureless figure falling from the sky. A sunny background marred by a jagged tear in the sky, through which stars and a strange eye could be seen. A broken grandfather clock in the lower right corner.

_The Oracle._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The card name was suggested by Luunyscarlet!


	2. The Waif

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Countess asks Olga for a report, and Olga makes no attempt to hide that she's curious about All The Things.

Alice didn’t talk much.

Part of this was simply reasonable, given the situation; only about half the circus spoke English with a reasonable degree of fluency, and while Olga said that the girl had admitted to some knowledge of other languages, she wasn’t comfortable enough with them to try having more complicated conversations than “Can I have some water?” and “Which way to the WC?”

(That had been a conversation of its own, they’d found. The relief on Alice’s face upon finding out that they had on-board facilities with sewage systems and chemically-treated toilet paper, even small sinks and soap, had been almost funny. It was only in about a quarter of the wagons, and there were only four pop-up showers in the entire camp, of course, but it was a necessary luxury for travel, when one could afford it.)

English, fluent, and with a vocabulary that marked her as either a native speaker or very close to. Serbian, somewhat useful in the wastelands, but with the kind of limited vocabulary that one found in first-generation children in countries that had no solid communities to support the home culture of an immigrant family. Spanish, if only bits and pieces. Japanese, which she admitted she’d never been very good at, and had forgotten most of.

And absolutely no Romanian whatsoever.

“I’ll teach her,” Olga promised. “She’s bunking with me for now, right? Even if she gets off at the next village, she should at least learn enough so she doesn’t get taken advantage of at the markets or hotels.”

“I rather doubt she’ll be leaving for a while,” the Countess told her. “No money, no family that she thinks she can go to, no friends that she’s willing to admit to having. Nothing but the clothes on her back.”

“Then all the more reason to teach her,” Olga said. She grinned. “It’ll be fun! And I don’t think most of the circus is going to be bothered by helping her. I got her over to help Embi with lunch, and he’s been holding a lesson of his own. Her accent is… strange, though. I know she _speaks_ English, but…”

“She’s not from there,” the Countess said. “Or, well, anywhere that we can figure out.”

“Hm,” Olga said. She leaned back against a wagon, arms crossed and watching the far side of the camp. “I’m trying to figure out what she can do, other than busywork like cutting vegetables, but she won’t admit to any skills that are worth putting on a performance with. Or skills at all, really.”

“So we keep an eye on her,” the Countess said. She tapped a pen to her lips. “Did you notice anything else?”

“She makes expressions like she’s remembering something that caused an emotion when she thinks people aren’t looking, sometimes mouths things the way Lars does when he's practicing lines but doesn’t want to bother anyone with the noise,” Olga offered. “I asked her what was so funny when I saw her smiling, but she just froze up and said she was remembering a joke.”

 “That could be any number of things,” the Countess said.

“She woke up late,” Olga added. “I just thought she was still exhausted from the days before we found her, but she said something about her sleep cycle being strange.”

“So what we’re doing here is making an unknown investment,” the Countess said. She frowned. “As far as we know, almost all of the skills she needs to be a contributing member of the circus are things she needs to be taught.”

Olga shrugged. “Isn’t that true for most of us?”

“I suppose,” the Countess sighed. “But given the circumstances under which she was picked up and how little she seems to know about the things I’d expect even a town girl to know…”

“Maybe she’ll learn faster than you think,” Olga suggested. “Though, we might need to ask Organza to make some smaller shirts; she can’t really borrow mine forever.”

“But she can borrow the skirts?” the Countess asked drily.

“The skirts mostly fit her,” Olga deadpanned. “Well enough that I can wait until she earns her way into enough coin to buy some herself, or if Organza has a spare moment, and her shoes are decent enough that I don’t think we need to worry. The shirts _really_ don’t.”

She gestured at her chest to emphasize the problem.

“Plus,” she added, after the Countess rolled her eyes. “She was asking me about our routes and the weather we usually hit, and how we warm the wagons in the winter. She actually did answer that question; apparently she gets cold very easily, and has some condition that means her fingers don’t circulate properly. We had a bit of trouble getting that translated, but it seems to be what she’s most worried about.”

The Countess rubbed at one temple. “We’ll see about addressing that issue once we can actually see it happening. Is there anything _else_ I need to know?”

“She talks in her sleep.”

“That’s not particularly useful information, Olga.”

“Oh, I know. It was just very funny. She switched languages three times in as many lines in under a minute, and was arguing with, I _think_ , a teacher.”

The Countess shook her head. “You have something to be doing, dear. Hop to it.”

Olga flashed her a smile and swanned off to who-knew-where.

The Countess looked across the camp, still frowning.

Something was off.

o.o.o.o.o

Three shirts, one set of pants, one skirt, work shoes, a headband, a necklace, four pairs of socks, six pairs of underwear, a set of pajamas, and one bra. This was the grand total of what she now had for a wardrobe.

Two of the shirts were left over from a young woman that had grown up in the company, who had, at age sixteen, chosen to stay in a town and put down roots, rather than continue traveling as she had for most of her life. The skirt was worn and faded, but made of sturdy materials, and also a hand-me-down from an unknown personage who, upon outgrowing it, had left it in the company wardrobe. The same was true of the socks and pajamas.

The pants had made the trip from one world to the next on her person, as had one shirt, one set of underthings, her headband, her necklace, one set of socks, and her glasses.

The only truly _new_ parts of her wardrobe were the extra underthings.

It was a far cry from what she’d had before, but she’d make do.

“You are used to more, then?” Olga asked, head pillowed on her arms as she watched the folding go on from her own bed.

Alice hesitated. “I had a habit of never throwing things away. My room was filled with things from across the years, including shirts that I’d gotten when I was… ten? Twelve? That still somehow fit. It builds up.”

“Close to your parents?”

Alice shrugged. She put away the last of the underthings, considered the last pair of socks, considered the temperature of the wagon, and then put those away as well. No need, tonight.

She met Olga’s eyes when she looked up, and then immediately looked down again.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Olga asked.

“One of each, both younger,” Alice answered. She wondered if they were missing her. If there had been time for her to be missed yet, with the time-travel. If she’d even been removed, or just copy-pasted as she was and left to roam.

She stared fixedly at the fabric of her new pajamas, one hand coming up to fiddle with her necklace. She felt her eyes unfocus. She didn’t bother to fix that issue until Olga coughed.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asked.

Alice shook her head. “Not really. Um, maybe later. Someday. I’m still not done… processing.”

“Processing?” Olga asked, with a tone that suggested she wasn’t questioning the need to process so much as the definition of the word itself.

“Er, like…” Alice trailed off. “Working through it. Thinking about it until I know why and how it hurts, and how to make it stop hurting. Or just waiting.”

Olga made an understanding noise, and after a few minutes, asked, “Why do you want to stay with the circus? You can stay at the next town. The Countess said you mentioned you want to stay here for a long time.”

Alice stiffened despite herself, memories flashing through her mind as she stared down at the floor.

_You must change the—_

**_—say nothing that we do not allow—_ **

**_—w̞͇̋̍͌͗ị͂̇ͩ̄ͮ̚͞l̘̠̤̩͉͖̣l͎̲̂̃̋ͅ ̺͔̙̩̲͆̈͑ͅb̬͚̓ͧ̇͋̂ê̶̗̱̬̼͕̜͖ ̵̹̼̭̯̻̏͌w̖̘̳̜͚ͤa̼͊̐ͅr͈͔̥ͫͧͧͨ͘ṅ̢͉̠̐̿͊̀̔ͯe̬͉͔̺̬̖ͅd̜͇̯͇͓̖̤͊̂,̲͎̜͓̖͋̂̒̒́ ͔̲͔̥ͯ̾b̥̬̬̻̦͉ͯͧ̌̑u̯̫̮̱̪̬͊t̘̗ ̈͆̀̅͑͞d̠̣̔ͤ̅ͤo̤͉̝͚̫͕ ̞̮̭̦͓̓̎̂̌̇ͭ̏n͍̮͊ͤͬ̌̊͋̌o̯̺̪̹̼̐̃̐̄t̑̂́̓͏̯̮̩ ̯̞̬͈̝̽ͭ̐p̓ͨ̆͗̈͌r̶̩͉̰̺̗̞ͯ̇ͪ̓̽̚eͨś̭̀͊͑s̰͙̎̾ͨ̒ ̴̯̭̟̺͉̼͎ͫͤͯ͑̈́ǒ̝̠̜̋ͧ̿ͪ͘n̮̓͟c̠̖̘̭͇͖̪ȅ̪̺̓͠ ̪̝̜̟̆̀̐ͥ͘y̴̰̮͉̤͔̭̝͆͗ͯ̋ơ͎͇̜͙̟̫̝̑̌̇ͪͮ̄̓u̅̾̈́̍́̋͏̬̦͚̫̱͓̝ ͇̟̠̲̬̗̓̄̀ͬk̦̙̼̻̲ͣ͊ͪ̿̊̂n̵̺̦͚ͮͩ̉̄ͭo͖̻̖͖̅ͦ̄w̯̟͓͕ͫ͆ ̼̈̏̎́͊ơ̗f̮͂̒ͣ͊ ̶̺̘͚̩̻ͥ̓̃ͬͩä̸͎͚̬̠̩̞̼́ͫ̈́̍͛ͧ̈ ̒̉̌̓͊͏̼̞̗l͉̯̣̬̊͛i̻ͅm̦̠͈̻͍͕͍̆̐͡i͑̋̀̓̅͏̻͔̰̭̼̥̰t̫͍͡—_ **

 

She shuddered and shook her head. “I can’t answer that. I’m sorry.”

Liquid dread crawled up her spine, cold fear and warm distaste and a burning, tamped-down anger she couldn’t show. She had to play it safe. She couldn’t say more than she was allowed, even if the lines of what she was allowed were _vague_ and _utterly unhelpful_.

 “Besides,” she said, pulling up a fake cheer that almost made her actually feel better. “It’ll be fun, right?”

Olga blinked slowly at her, clearly not believing her. “…yes. Fun.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spend a good 75% of my time not knowing what I'm doing. This includes the plot for this fic. I might have just set up an Extra Angsty Death.


	3. The Page

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Have some news!

Alice was staring into space.

Hieronymus Payne didn’t generally try to engage with the personal lives of young women. He’d long since stopped being young himself, and while he’d certainly befriended a number of women in the circus, the young ones tended to have very little to talk to him about that didn’t have to do with their jobs. This was particularly true before breakfast.

But Alice was new, and concerning, and the circumstances under which they’d found her had been odd enough that he wasn’t ready to stop keeping a careful eye on her, just in case.

Alice was staring into space, and had been for several minutes, various emotions flitting across her face and failing to make even an iota of sense.

“Miss Nixy,” he said, taking a seat next to her and pretending he didn’t notice the violent way she started at his words. “Something on your mind?”

She stared at him, mouth open in a shock that hadn’t yet dissipated, and then abruptly turned around to stare towards the woods again. She frowned.

“What day is it?” she finally asked.

“June tenth,” he said, and then, just in case, added, “A Monday.”

She frowned, and nodded slowly, lost in thought.

“Should I assume that means something to you?” he asked, after it became clear that she wasn’t going to elaborate.

“I think so,” she said. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, dark curls bouncing. “I won’t know until more time passes, though. I think I’m still… figuring things out.”

Payne watched her, and she shrank in on herself, leaning away from him just a tad. “Young lady, I sincerely hope you aren’t putting my circus in danger by being here.”

“No!” she protested, and then winced and looked away again as she realized what she’d done. “I’m _not_ , I promise you that. Nobody wants me dead or anything like that. Nobody even… nobody even knows I exist to want me dead in the first place, except the people who put me here, and they’re not going to touch the circus if I do something wrong, just… just me. You’re not in danger from me. Um. No more than anyone else, I mean. I’m still a liability if you get attacked, I guess. Wastelands and all that.”

Payne stayed quiet for a long moment.

“You talk quite a lot for someone who doesn’t say much, Miss Nixy,” he finally said.

“Sorry.”

“But I’m inclined to believe you,” he finished. “You don’t mean harm to the circus, and you’re unlikely to put us in danger just by being here. The fact that you are hiding something, and not even trying to disguise this fact… I will allow. We are all given room for our secrets.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, voice low. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

 “Master Payne!”

They both turned at Abner’s voice, to see the man himself jogging up to them, looking frazzled. He wasn’t out of breath, but there was something Payne didn’t like the look of in his face.

“Abner?”

“There’s a problem in the props wagon,” Abner reported. “The Countess said to come get you.”

The props wagon? That was… given the unease on Abner’s face, this was something to do with Moxana.

“I’ll be seeing you, Miss Nixy,” he said, getting to his feet and following Abner away.

o.o.o.o.o

Alice could see it, like an overlay of an image shifted just ever so slightly into another phase of reality. The conversation with Master Payne had made it clear that he couldn’t see it, which was really probably for the best.

It had been late October when she’d left, nearly Halloween. A late Friday afternoon, just coming home from work, and then—

And then she—

_She’d—_

Alice stopped thinking about it.

She’d fallen through to Wonderland, she told herself. A pretty euphemism for a job that terrified her with no pay and only one real benefit, and endless danger. A pretty euphemism for a job that she hadn’t asked for, or even really agreed to. A pretty euphemism for a job that she’d only just started and had already started to adjust to.

Falling through to Wonderland. That was all she’d done. No thoughts about flashing lights and frozen people, of eldritch beings and twisted words, of being torn from her own world and placed in one that was so much more dangerous to everyone except for, of course, herself.

They’d given her a tool, apparently. This Monday matched up with a Monday in her own world, if the ages she’s spent in nothingness truly meant nothing.

Mondays meant a new page.

And apparently, an incomplete knowledge of the canon, because canon hadn’t even been _over yet_ , was something to be rectified.

So she got a new page.

The story would keep updating for her, useful or not.

For now.

For… for now

She already knew time was different for her own world and this new one.

There was every chance she’d be receiving updates regularly for a time, and then suddenly lose them. She half-expected it. Some metaphysical explanation about how time in GG only counted when it was plot-relevant might have been bandied about, if she’d had any information other than the page hanging in front of her.

Would she be getting more?

Would she be able to read back?

The image was already fading.

Alice buried her face in her hands and tried to calm the rabbit-pace of her heart.

o.o.o.o.o

_Many of our current records regarding Dreen-Gifts were collected by Dame Genevieve D’Ambrosio in the early nineteenth century. In the sixty-five years since, only three confirmed cases have existed to our knowledge:_

_Jason Valentine, an occasional companion of William and Barry Heterodyne. **[1]**_

_Nikki Minamoto, who was a lawyer in the port town of Manhattan, and was a well-known moderator of debates for taxation and trading rights between the Lenape government and the visiting traders from Europa and northern Africa. She was still alive at the time of the loss of the Americas, but her fate is currently unknown. **[2]**_

_Nathalie Charbonneau, who became a high-ranking advisor in the Imperial Court of the Middle Kingdom, and moved from Beijing to Shanghai in 1876. **[3]**_

_Other than these three, there have been a half-dozen claims at the presence or existence of Dreen-Gifts. Almost unilaterally, these have been tried and tested, and proven false. Perhaps the most likely of the rumors is the one that the fewest people are attempting to prove true. There is an unnervingly lifelike statue preserved in Baron Klaus Wulfenbach’s study, looking as though the person was frozen in time, and reports claim that inquiries as to the nature of the statue simply result in the Baron stating that it is of an old friend of his. See the chapter on rumored Dreen-Gifts for more information._

_Mme. Charbonneau is the only surviving Dreen-Gift known to the general public at this time. For more information on specific Dreen-Gifts, please see the index._

o.o.o.o.o

There was a single card on Moxana’s table.

Her eyes were open.

She was waiting.

“I just came in to check on something for the next show,” Lars explained, apparently having been the one to find her first. “She’s been sitting there. I don’t think I’ve seen this one before, Master Payne.”

Payne hadn’t seen her use it before either, but he’d read the notebook in Moxana’s table. He knew the meanings.

The Oracle.

An unexpected visitor, a fortune teller, a Dreen-Gift, pride going before a fall.

The first was the most likely interpretation. The fortune teller… perhaps once her language skills had caught up, they would see what Olga had to say on that. The third was patently unlikely, if technically possible, and the fourth was… a warning.

Alice did not seem prideful, but in as large a group of Sparks as their own, the idea of someone else’s pride posing a danger that, in relation to her, brought about a fall… it was plausible.

“Master Payne?”

He turned to look at Abner and Lar, and the Countess behind them. “I believe this is Moxana’s card for young Alice Nixy.”

“The new girl?” Lars asked. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“Bringing out an entire new card for one person seems… unlikely,” Abner pointed out. “You’re sure it’s for her?”

“An unexpected visitor,” Payne said, tapping the felt near the card. “The most likely interpretation, I think, but I’ll keep an eye open for the others.”

“Which are?” Countess Marie asked.

“Pride going before a fall,” he said, the next most likely, and, “a fortune-teller, a Dreen-Gift. Those are the recorded meanings. There are others, I’m sure, but those are the common ones.”

He looked at Moxana again, and she blinked at him, a slow and careful movement. It was the calmest he’d seen her since Tinka had been taken, save for the moments she seemed dead to the world.

Moxana’s hand flashed, and the card disappeared, replaced with a knight.

She looked at Payne again, and then resumed her position.

She closed her eyes.

“Do you know what that’s supposed to mean?” Lars asked.

Payne closed his eyes and sighed. He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Trouble. It means trouble.”

And whatever the trouble was, he was going to have to see it through.

* * *

[1] Herr Valentine was one of the few Dreen-Gifts to retire to a civilian life upon the completion of their duties.

[2] Madam Minamoto was well into middle age upon her introduction by the Dreen, unusual in that most are under thirty. She was a lawyer who spoke five languages with varying degrees of fluency, and learned Munsee in deference to the local system, and as a way to more efficiently communicate between the groups.

[3] Unfortunately for Mme. Charbonneau, she did not speak Mandarin Chinese, and did not easily learn. She encountered great difficulty in completing her duties as a Dreen-Gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The statue is a friend's self-insert, who lasted about two days before being punished by the Dreen for saying too much.


	4. The Dancer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, she needed SOME kind of job...

Olga got used to the singing.

A week and a half rooming with Alice, and she got used to it. She didn’t tend to do it when it was quiet and people were around, but if there was enough noise that nobody was liable to pay her attention, or if she was alone, Alice sang.

Olga tried to pay attention. The songs were almost always in English, though there were a handful in snatches of… well, she wasn’t sure _what_ some of them were, and others were in what she was pretty sure was Serbian, but most were in English. They rarely lasted long, and were almost always just… snatches. A verse or two, maybe a chorus. Then Alice would trail off, looking wistful and a little upset, hand drifting towards where a pocket would have been if her pants had been normal, and start something new.

 _Did the mushrooms make you grow,_  
_Did the flowers say hello,_  
_Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee,_  
_Care to sing a song for me?_

 _Did you like your unbirthday,_  
_Did the Cheshire cat smile your way,_  
_Can you tell a raven from a writing desk,_  
_Was the Hatter’s tea the best?_

 _Did you do as the Queen asked,_  
_Did you see through the looking glass…_

That one came up quite a lot.

Olga paid attention for a lot of reasons, but mostly because they really _did_ need an act and a job for Alice to do when they were in town. It was all very well for her to be running errands between whoever could get their orders across to her, but she was going to need _something_ to actually show.

Her voice wasn’t… bad. It wasn’t the best, either, but as Alice slowed down, or switched songs, the sour pitches resolved themselves to something more pleasant. Olga figured that it was simply a matter of practice, then, or even just range or style. Passable enough to throw her on a stage, and maybe make a show of her being English?

(She wasn’t English, and Olga knew as much, but it was the best guess anyone could give. Taki had suggested that she’d been raised in one of the trading towns in the Americas that had a lot of English merchants on long-term assignments, explaining the odd accent that Countess Marie had confirmed, and the lack of familiarity with Romanian. Considering how long the Americas had been lost, nobody was sure how likely that theory was. It certainly _would_ have explained why she was so convinced nobody was going to come looking for her, if they’d had an explanation for how she’d gotten to Europa in the first place.)

And then Olga saw the dancing. Tucked away behind some wagons, hidden from the rest of the camp, Alice danced.

Alice normally moved like a dancer, to the point that most of the camp had taken notice. She’d shift her weight sometimes, make a hitching, aborted step that might have been a half-hearted move, walk to the rhythm if someone was playing as she passed by, flick her hands as she walked and mouthed what might have been lyrics…

She moved like a dancer, but she’d not yet danced, not where anyone could see.

And now, watching Alice dance, Olga realized something important.

It wasn’t that Alice was good at the dances they normally had on stages.

It was that, even without the music to give her something to dance _to_ , Alice’s dancing was odd.

Skilled, Olga thought, in whatever the style was.

But utterly, incomprehensibly, unrecognizably _strange_.

Tinka, perhaps, might have done dances like this, to the strange music that Contasia had been reported to sometimes perform. Master Payne had mentioned once that there were songs Contasia had sung and played in the days of the Storm King, songs that had delighted the Lady Timothea and confused or discomforted nearly everyone else.

She moved like a clank one moment, stuttered and stiff and jolting, and then smoothly spun in the next, liquid and flowing. There were hitches here and there, things that Olga thought might be confusion or hesitation, rather than part of whatever dance she’d chosen to do, but...

It was new and it was weird and it was something that, with the right accompaniment, might get the attention of a townie’s spare change.

Olga decided to go find André and Gospodin Rassmussin.

o.o.o.o.o

“I’m not sure what you—”

Olga clapped a hand over André’s mouth, giving him a glare. She removed her hand after he rolled his eyes, and beckoned him and Gospodin Rassmussin after her. Abner trailed along behind them, hands tucked into his pockets.

Olga had convinced Professor Moonsock to play something on her lute on the other side of the nearest wagon, just to keep something going. Olga had even chosen a song that, she hoped, matched the style Alice seemed to prefer.

She’d chosen well. Alice was still dancing when they got back to her, even if she’d shifted her style to more of the fluid movements and less of the clank-like ones.

She kept an eye on André and Gospodin Rassmussin’s faces as they watched, and even Abner peeking around them.

Confusion turned to distaste, distaste to intrigue, and intrigue to calculation.

Alice did one of the jerky sets of movements, the ones that had part of her body acting as an anchor to thin air as the rest of her moved around it, and an odd shudder like a clank whose gears had caught in the middle of a movement.

Gospodin Rassmussin’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Tinka did that a few times,” Abner said quietly. Olga didn’t remember that, but Abner had been with the circus longer than she had, and Tinka had been here longer still. “She’d hum music that sounded… strange, when she did it.”

“She needs to work on her flexibility,” Gospodin Rassmussin noted. “Muscle tone and stamina, too, I think.”

“But you can work with it?” Olga asked. She looked at André. “Can you—”

“I have an idea,” he said. “Abner?”

“I’ll speak with Master Payne,” he promised.

o.o.o.o.o

“I’ve only done improv for the past five years.”

Alice fidgeted under the gazes that laid on her, eyes darting around until they finally settled on the table. Payne, the Countess, Rassmussin, Abner, André, Olga… it was an intimidating tableau. “Um. I’m not good with set choreography. I tend to get confused about what comes next and need more repetitions than most people to actually memorize it, I think. It’s been a long time since I tried, though.”

“So you improvise,” Gospodin Rassmussin said, voice flat.

“Mostly, yeah,” she said. “It’s easier if I know the song really well?”

André and Rassmussin looked at each other. André made a face and Rassmussin leaned in to whisper something. A translation, maybe. Alice didn’t remember him saying anything to her directly, and the general ratio she’d been given suggested that only about half the camp really spoke enough English for it to be worth holding a conversation with her.

“You didn’t bring this up before,” Olga said.

“She did,” Payne said. He was eyeing Alice critically. It felt a little like being under a microscope. “But what she said, specifically, was that the type of dancing she did was not compatible with the show.”

“It’s _not_ ,” Alice muttered. She could feel the tension crawling up her shoulders and neck. “I just… I can’t do choreography and my style is fine back home but it’s _weird_ here. And I’m not as good on the flexibility front, or how high I can jump or… most things, as most of the people here, so… I just figured it wasn’t good enough.”

“Weird _is_ good,” the Countess told her. “And the rest we can work on. I’d like to see a demonstration myself, and I’m sure Payne would as well.”

Payne himself nodded slowly, still with that odd look in his eye. “Yes, I think that’s a good idea.”

“But none of the music here is… um…” Alice bit her lip, looking around. “It doesn’t really… match the stuff I do best.”

“Is there a style you think might?” the Countess asked. “Something you’d expect us to be able to approximate easily?”

Alice hesitated. Thought about it. Plans ran across her mind and were immediately scrapped. Most of what she knew was too _modern_. Syncopated rhythms of any kind were right out. No swing, no EDM, no rock or punk or rap or country or… well, almost anything.

Folk music and anything her mind shoved under the umbrella of ‘classical’ was pretty much the only thing she knew definitely existed this early.

They were waiting. Getting impatient, probably. Shit. Uh.

“Irish folk music?” She chanced. A few eyebrows popped upwards. “Fiddle and drums, I guess? Something repetitive enough that I can catch on to the pattern and anticipate the next bit? And, um, bouncy. Stuff that’s meant for energetic dancing, not slow and sad.”

Her voice was squeaking. Lovely. Just what she needed.

More whispering from Rassmussin to André, who also raised an eyebrow, but then nodded sharply.

“We can do that,” Rassmussin said, just a little unnecessarily.

Alice smiled uneasily, fairly certain that discomfort was radiating from every pore.

o.o.o.o.o

It _was_ strange, the Countess decided. She could see a few elements of other dance styles as Alice moved, a few sections where the Irish Step had clearly been an influence, and a few moments of what might have been ballet, what could have been something from further out east and, just as the other circus members had said, something that looked _very much_ like either a string puppet or a malfunctioning clank. Usually one or the other, sometimes both. They went through several songs, a bit of a different style every time, until they managed to get some variation out of her. Until she managed to relax and just dance, as Olga had first caught her.

It was strange and… still skilled. Alice knew what she was doing, for all that she claimed improvisation and confusion and a tendency to just throw things together. It was also clear that this wasn’t her preferred music, but there was _enough_ to work with. Gospodin Rassmussin would get her whipped into shape, the Countess was sure, and she’d be wowing the townies soon enough.

Townies loved strange. That’s what the circus was _for_.

“The Dancing Phoenix?” She muttered to Payne under her breath. “She said ‘Phoenix’ would work as a stage name, yes?”

“It would make it easy to theme her stage costumes,” Payne noted. “Maybe toss in some pyrotechnics.”

“Hard to manage timing if she’s improvising,” the Countess pointed out.

“I think we’ll be able to work something out,” Payne said. “We’ll match it to the music, so even if she doesn’t move in a particularly impressive way in the moment, the music will make up for it.”

“Think she’s any good on stage?” Olga asked, drawing their attention for a moment. “She didn’t mention stage fright or anything, but…”

“If she didn’t mention it, I don’t think it’s going to be a problem,” the Countess said. “She’s been fairly open about her shortcomings. I think she tends to underestimate herself, or at least misinterpret things. She wasn’t wrong about the dancing not matching, she just… didn’t realize that wasn’t a bad thing.”

“She also said she didn’t think she was professional level,” Olga said. “I distinctly remember that happening.”

“That where she’d come from, people were much better, yes,” the Countess mused. “But even mediocrity seems amazing when you have nothing to compare it to, I’d say.”

“Not exactly the most inspiring or comforting words, I think,” Abner said.

“Then it’s a good thing she doesn’t know enough Romanian to understand us yet,” Payne countered.

The conversation ended there, as Alice faltered with the end of a song, and held up a hand to call for a pause in the music, her other arm wrapped around her stomach, breathing heavily.

“That hitch she does with her leg sometimes…” Olga said. “Thin pants and an overskirt?”

“We’ll work on it,” the Countess promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that Alice is singing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_iy71v46r4  
> And videos of the stuff I've danced that I've deemed Weird Enough  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0tpxLenf2A&t=115s (Performance for a dance class I took for PE credits my senior year of high school)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKz2-oIslVI (Bored in my dorm my senior year of college)  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf0I5sKPAbU (Bored in my room at home a few weeks ago)


	5. The Breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice is a lot of things. Stable is not one of them.

The training was torture.

Well, no, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t like she was being… being strapped to tables and cut open or anything.

But when Rassmussin chose to get her into shape, it was a lot. It was running laps and stretching every hour and, through every moment where she had the breath to spare, drilling her on verb conjugations and noun declensions and vocabulary and—

She didn’t curse him out, of course, but she certainly _thought_ the swears she wanted to sling his way.

It worked, though. Slowly, and with a lot of bottled rage on her part, and a few visits to the Countess and Master Payne when one of her joints did something funny and uncomfortable that had Rassmussin cursing _her_ out for not warning him about her body’s limitations, but it worked.

(It wasn’t like she really had a _list_ of things that were wrong with her. Things just… happened. Her stomach threw tantrums and her hair fell out and her joints slipped out of place and her eyesight was shit and she was always tired, no matter how much she ate or slept. They weren’t world-ending injuries or illnesses, just… annoying. Painful, sometimes, but mostly just annoying.)

(That would change with winter, but she’d already had that conversation with the Countess. They’d figure something out, and hopefully without making her lightheaded and dizzy in the process.)

Rassmussin was a taskmaster, but he got her in shape.

He also made her see the Countess for one other thing.

o.o.o.o.o

“You squint,” he said, as Alice did some exercises he’d assigned, moving far too much to risk her glasses falling off again. They were resting on a small stoop a fair ways behind her. Rassmussin chose to speak English, if only because this seemed important enough to not risk a miscommunication on the basis of Alice’s less-than-stellar Romanian skills. “Very much. How well can you see?”

“Not very?” Alice managed to say between gasps. “Glasses take care of it.”

“Nearsighted?”

“Yeah. And astigmatism.”

Rassmussin frowned at that, not that Alice saw. “Will you be able to dance properly without them? Without falling off the stage?”

Alice hesitated in her answer. “If I get a chance to practice? Lay down a tarp that’s the right color and size so I get used to the amount of room?”

“Hmph,” he said, folding his hands on top of his cane and watching her. “Back to your exercises, child. The kicks, now.”

At the end of the practice session, he pulled her aside before she could run for the showers, and asked to see her glasses. She handed them over without a question, but there was an air of resignation that quickly gained an explanation as he held them up to his own eyes.

“Your eyesight is _abominable_ ,” Rassmussin said.

“I’m aware,” Alice grumbled, glaring ineffectually at the ground. Rassmussin rather doubted she could see the grass as more than vague patches of green, considering what he’d just seen. “Can I have them back now?”

He passed them back, frowning. “You haven’t gotten any backups since you joined the circus, have you?”

“Haven’t really had a chance,” Alice said, her voice flat. “I’m always with the circus and I don’t know how to ask, and I’m not exactly earning my keep yet. Seemed better to hold off.”

Rassmussin eyed her for another moment, and then shook his head. “Go clean yourself up. We’ll be going to speak with the Countess once you’re finished.”

The Countess, upon actually looking through Alice’s glasses, swore.

Colorfully.

“You thought you’d be able to dance safely without these?” she demanded. “How did you manage before?”

“I had contacts?” Alice squeaked out. She looked the Countess in the eyes, and then immediately looked away.

“Contacts?” the Countess asked. To Rassmussin’s ears, she sounded more confused than angry, now, but Alice still had to shake herself before she could answer.

“Um, contact lenses. They’re like… tiny, soft lenses that go in your eye? Or, well, on your eye, but under the eyelid,” she said. “I had some, back home. So I could put those in if I wanted to dance without worrying about my glasses.”

The Countess’s eyes widened, and while Rassmussin quite understood the urge to take this concept and run with it, they still hadn’t informed Alice of just how many Sparks were in the circus, and running with this particular idea was liable to have unfortunate consequences.

“Perhaps if we simply strapped the glasses closer to your head?” he suggested. “A simple elastic…”

Alice made a face. “Done that. It’s really uncomfortable. Granted… most of that was during skiing, and behind goggles that were pressing the glasses down, so maybe…”

“Goggles might actually do the trick, if we can make some good lenses for you,” the Countess said. She frowned at Alice, tapping her chin. “Can you estimate your prescription for me?”

Alice hesitated, and then admitted, “I don’t know what standards you use. I know what my prescription is back home, but…”

“Fair enough,” the Countess said. “Nearsighted or farsighted?”

“Near.”

“Astigmatism?”

“Moderate.”

The Countess nodded, walked over to a part of the wall of the wagon she shared with Master Payne, and unfolded an optician’s setup, including a small bench that swiveled out from the lower side of the wagon.

Alice blinked. “I thought your thing was chemistry.”

Rassmussin wondered where she’d heard that.

“It is,” the Countess said, pulling a chart of letters out from the other end of the wagon. She tapped at the array of lenses above her temple. “But I dabble. Now take a seat.”

The examination went smoothly, and by the end of the next week, the Countess had crafted two sets of lensed goggles with thin, delicate frames. One for practice, and one set with so many decorations and colors added in that it was clearly meant for stage work and little else.

o.o.o.o.o

Her hand flickered.

Alice hissed out a breath and pulled it to her chest, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. Embi gave her an odd look, but Taki had enough of his attention that he apparently hadn’t noticed the problem.

Alice gave him a weak smile and a wave with her free hand.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Just burned myself on the pot,” she told him. It was close enough to the truth. “I’ll be fine!”

He nodded dubiously, but went back to his conversation.

Alice excused herself and went to a secluded corner, then pulled her hand away from her stomach to get a better look.

Nothing. No redness. No pain. No flickering.

So this was what Dreen-Gift protection looked like.

Quantum destabilization, they’d called it, before they sent her here. Something for the road to keep her safe.

She hadn’t had _reason_ for it to pop up before. The most she’d done to injure herself was minor enough for it to not crop up. Tripping, and splinters, and sleeping oddly enough to give herself shoulder pains.

(She wondered what would happen if she tried to bite herself.)

(She forced herself to push the thought away.)

Quantum destabilization.

It was probably an accurate name.

Mostly, Alice thought, it reminded her of gifs she’d seen of Ghost, from Ant-Man and the Wasp. She’d never gotten around to seeing the movie, but the way her hand flickered, the overlapping, simultaneous forms her hand took in response to the danger, minor as it was, _looked_ like Ghost’s abilities did. From what Alice remembered, the woman’s powers had something to do with quantum physics too.

It was like someone had filmed her hand three or four times in different positions and movements, and then overlapped the videos with only partial opacity and a lot of glitch effects. Afterimages, too.

Nothing now, though.

Her hand looked fine.

It was uncomfortable, when the destabilization happened. Not hellishly so, but enough that she’d have been avoiding a chance of getting hurt, and not just because of old reflexes and the fear that someone would notice and figure it out.

She was only barely part of the circus, right now. They seemed to tolerate her well enough, but as much as they liked adding _Sparks_ to the company, a _Dreen-Gift_ was another matter altogether.

If they found out, she didn’t know that she’d be allowed to stay, and there was a _reason_ she’d been placed in their path. There was a reason she’d been put with the circus that would one day encounter Agatha. There was… there had to be. There had to be a reason. She had to stay with them, because she’d been put with them for a reason, even if she didn’t know what that reason was.

All she’d been told was that she had to keep the loop from breaking.

Alice pulled her hand to her chest again. No. It wasn’t hellishly uncomfortable. It wasn’t as bad as what she’d gone through as she’d been pulled from nothing-space to Europa, disassembled and reassembled and told, with just a whisper at the back of her mind, that there would be punishments for saying too much. That she’d feel this again, in little starts and greater severity as warnings if she tried to say something before its time. There were flashes in her mind’s eye of ever-frozen people, Dreen-Gifts who had pushed and pushed until the Dreen had stopped them.

Permanently.

She didn’t know what would be too much. She didn’t know how many times she could push a subject, if she was allowed to try again once circumstances had changed enough. She didn’t know how she'd know when it _was_ time.

She didn’t know, so for now it was best to just not say anything at all.

Her heart was beating too fast. She could feel a shudder working its way up her chest. There was a tightness in her cheeks, just below her eyes, and her throat was closing up, and—

_No, no, no, no, no._

Alice sprinted for the wagon she shared with Olga, prayed she’d find it empty, and threw herself on the bed as soon as she was sure that it was.

(This wasn’t quite true. She took off her shoes and skirt and jacket, first.)

She buried her face in her pillow and screamed.

She breathed in raggedly, feeling it hitch and hitch and _hitch_ , felt it tear through her throat and fill her lungs with a desperate energy, and screamed.

The tears had long since started falling from her eyes and staining the pillow that she muffled her voice into.

A wagon, alone, and pillow to hide her pain in. All she needed, right?

Her body shuddered with every breath, tightened as she started hyperventilating, overheating in the rage and fear and desperate self-pity that she swam in as she sobbed.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t _fucking fair_.

She had a fake name and a fake past and was as close to useless as a situation could make her. She was stuck in a place where she could barely communicate, in constant fear of superiors who gave vague instructions and horrifying punishments, and had no one to confide in.

She breathed in and in and in, and wordlessly screamed.

_She didn’t want this._

o.o.o.o.o

“Olga?”

She looked up at her name, swallowed the mouthful of porridge, and said. “Hey, Rivet. Need something?”

The woman in question looked uncomfortable. She rubbed the back of her neck and jabbed a thumb over her shoulder. “Uh, I was walking past your wagon and… it sounds… bad.”

Olga frowned. “What, is the axel off again? I thought you fixed that. Or, wait, no, you wouldn’t be able to hear that if it wasn’t moving. Did—”

“Not the wagon,” Rivet interrupted. She was looking even more uncomfortable. “There was, um, I think there’s something wrong. With the new girl. Alice. I don’t know her voice that well, but it sounded like her and it was coming from your wagon, so…”

“Oh.”

Olga wasn’t actually sure that she was the best person to address _anything_ about Alice, since they only kind of knew each other, despite rooming together. Alice was reclusive and twitchy and Olga caught her daydreaming and looking all… sad and lost, probably more often than was healthy.

But it was her wagon, really, and it wasn’t like Rassmussin or the Countess had time right now, and nobody else really saw Alice as much as Olga did…

“I’ll go see what’s up.”

She stood up and, after a moment’s hesitation, grabbed another bowl of porridge. She didn’t know what was wrong with Alice, but she’d probably missed dinner.

When Olga made it to the wagon, she didn’t hear much. Whatever Rivet had heard, it was gone.

She knocked on the door, got no response, and walked in.

Alice was curled up in her bed, a little ball under the covers, only her hair peeking out past the fabric.

Olga could hear quiet, unsteady breathing, now. A hiccup. She could see the shuddering.

“Are you okay?” She asked, despite the answer being obvious.

“Absolutely not,” Alice said, her voice rough with… something. She somehow managed to curl in on herself even further, the lump under the covers shrinking further.

(Alice was relatively tall for a woman, but she was small in every other way. It was easy to forget how tall she was in the face of how slim, how flat, how… much she shrank in on herself. She put effort into looking as harmless as possible, Olga thought. Or maybe the fear and reticence and helplessness was all real.)

(She was a small presence.)

(It was easy to forget she was there, sometimes.)

“I brought some food,” Olga said. She sat down on her own bed. “Rivet said she… heard some noises coming from here.”

Alice pulled the covers down enough to peer at Olga through wet eyelashes. “I… had a breakdown. It’s been a long month.”

“Yeah,” Olga said. She gave a tentative smile. “What, is living with the circus really that bad?”

Alice’s eyes snapped shut and she shuddered again, pulling the covers closer to herself. “It’s _not_ the circus. You guys are fine.”

“Can I ask what it is?” Olga pushed. “You do not have to answer if you do not want to.”

“…world’s worst unpaid internship,” Alice muttered. She laughed wetly. It may have even qualified for a scoff. “It was about what happened that had me meeting you guys in the first place. I can’t… I don’t… there’s nothing more to say.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Alice sat up, rubbing at her eyes and sniffling.

Olga held out a bowl. “Porridge?”

Alice squinted at the bowl, and then started feeling around for her glasses. They’d slipped between the mattress and the wall, and she had to clean them off before she could put them on.

Only then did she actually take the porridge.

Olga finished up her bowl as Alice… well, she mostly just poked at the food, but she did take at least a few bites. Olga counted it as a win.

“How much does this happen?” Olga asked, once she was finished and Alice was looking a little less like she’d start crying again at any moment.

Alice shrugged.

Olga bit her lip, put her bowl on the side table, and then moved to sit next to Alice on the other girl’s bed. “Has it been happening a lot?”

Alice didn’t meet her eyes. “Twice a week, maybe. I try not to when there are people around. It’s just when I’m alone that I… I’m sorry, you really don’t deserve to deal with my BS.”

“BS?” Olga asked. “Wait, no, that is not important. You are part of the circus now. We take care of each other. It that means that you need someone there while you cry, then someone will be there.”

Alice hugged her stomach, shivering, and the bowl that she had balanced on her lap threatened to fall. “You _really_ don’t need to do that.”

“We do,” Olga insisted. “We are friends now, right? We live together.”

Alice winced. “I don’t have the best track record with friendship, so that’s—”

Olga pulled her into a hug, and Alice somehow went stiffer.

“I _promise_ that I want to help you,” Olga said. “I do not know what is wrong, but I want to help you. The others will too, I think.”

Alice shook in place, eyes squeezed shut, arms wrapped around her torso and tears running down her cheeks again.

“Alice?”

Alice wailed, threw her arms around Olga, and started crying again.

Olga patted her back, whispered quiet reassurances, and wondered just what the hell had happened to put Alice in this state.


	6. The Debut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She's not a star, but she's... something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was supposed to be important plot stuff in this chapter but it got long.
> 
> So have Alice doing her thing and also some fake textbook excerpts.

_Europa’s most well-known Dreen-Gift is Lady Timothea Turner, oracle of the Storm King’s court. Van Rijn’s second apprentice and later a spouse of Simon Voltaire, the Master of Paris, she is remembered for her advances in chemistry, lab safety, and research into Dreen-Gift nature, alongside her strategic and tactical uses to Andronicus Valois as a result of said nature. Much of what is now known of Dreen-Gift nature is due to the research of Van Rijn and his apprentices, and while most of the research is attributed to Van Rijn himself, the contributions of Lady Timothea, as a Gift, a subject, and a Spark, were core to their findings and the theories they published._

_Lady Timothea was not the only Dreen-Gift of the time. There were, in fact,_ three _known Gifts involved in the start of the Long War. Lady Cindy Bonheur was a rival Dreen-Gift that showed up at the tail end of Lady Timothea’s tenure, and was often reported to have argued with Lady Timothea as to the best course of action for a viable outcome to the war with the Heterodynes. Little is known of the Dreen-Gift that worked for Clemethious Heterodyne; she was referred to as ‘Miss Lia’ by other members of the Heterodyne court, and there were rumors that she was offered the Jägerbräu. Her whereabouts and eventual fate are unknown outside of Mechanicsburg, and the citizens keep a tight-lipped silence as to whether she succumbed to death by the bräu or not._

_Many have theorized that the war would have ended differently if not for three dueling Dreen-Gifts, but in 1793, several of Lady Timothea’s journals were donated by the Master of Paris to the musée Carnavalet. Within them are outlines of the expected timeline, written in code, much of which is blotted out. Over the course of the centuries, parts have revealed themselves, revealing names and events just after they happen. The nature of the journals suggests that the Dreen themselves have taken pains to render the information in them inaccessible to the general public, and the Master of Paris confirmed that prior to the journals entering his possession, they would enter a state of quantum destabilization as Dreen-Gifts do if anyone save for Lady Timothea attempted to open them. Even Van Rijn himself never managed to open them without her._

_Enough remains legible that we know that the war ended just as foretold by the Lady herself. Below is an excerpt of the foreword to the earliest of the journals, translated as well as could be managed from her native world’s English. **[1]**_

> May 14, 1690
> 
> I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to write. I don’t know if they’re even going to let me write a tenth of what I know. If someone finds the journal, does that count as me handing out information before its time? Does it count as me telling someone? Will they make the journal phase out the way I do if someone tries to take it?
> 
> If nothing else, I need somewhere to keep a record of my thoughts, and somewhere to write down what _did_ happen so I can remember it, and then maybe figure out what _will_. Probably a good place to keep track of what’s going on as I see it, too; I don’t want to accidentally lose track of the politics that are happening while I’m here that I didn’t get to see in the comic. I don’t know what’ll happen if I manage to save Andronicus, or… hell, maybe ▫●◊◊□⌂◦◌ won’t even be born? The whole ⌂◊□◌●⌂┘◦□▫◊□▫◊● snarl might not even happen. It would certainly make Voltaire’s life easier…

_The ‘snarl,’ many have theorized, refers to the many descendants of Andronicus Valois, their intermarriages, and the many suspicious deaths surrounding them. The Master of Paris has thus far declined to comment on most theories regarding the journals, stating that his late wife’s knowledge of the future was often a secret even from him._

_What the journals_ do _tell us, however, is that Lady Timothea’s information was oddly divorced from the timeline in ways that most Dreen-Gifts’ knowledge is not. She knew immense amounts of the future, especially of major events and the fates of the major players of the wars, but had far less information on the events of the time than most Dreen-Gifts do. The following journal excerpt is one of several that addresses her theories regarding the Dreen’s choice of players for the war, and the still largely-unknown nature of the Canon that she drew from._

o.o.o.o.o

“Jumping split,” Gospodin Rassmussin commanded.

Alice jumped, kicking out her legs to either side, and landed with… well, she didn’t stick the landing, but she didn’t fall.

“Again.”

She did it again, and then again, and then one more time before he let her stop.

“You can do better,” he said. “Not yet, perhaps. But soon.”

“Thanks,” Alice managed, hand to her stomach. There wasn’t a cramp, not yet, but she was pretty sure she was risking one.

“In Romanian,” he said.

Alice made a face, but complied. “Mulsu—mulțumesc. Dom… Domnule Rassmussin”

“Good,” he said. “Professor Moonsock is almost finished with the feeding time for her mimmoths. As soon as she is, you will run through the choreography from Monday.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice said.

He eyed her for a moment, and then nodded sharply. “Take a seat. Drink some water. You have time.”

Alice carefully sat down on a long bench that they had set up for the night’s camp nearby. She had a canteen for water, one that gave anything put in it a metallic tang if the taste wasn’t already strong enough to cover it up. She didn’t _enjoy_ it, really, but it was tolerable.

It was especially easy to ignore the taste when she’d been exercising this much.

(Her parents had always said she didn’t do enough physical activity. Ta-da?)

She tilted her head one way, then the other. Loud cracks emanated, though she doubted they were audible to anyone except for herself.

“Hey, kid.”

Alice startled, then looked up at Professor Moonsock. She smiled weakly. “Time to get up?”

“You don’t have a spine,” Moonsock told her. “You should probably work on that.”

Alice’s smile thinned. “I just don’t like causing trouble when I don’t have to. Speak softly and carry a big stick and all that.”

Moonsock tilted her head, frowning. “Well, _that_ sounds like you’re quoting, but I can’t think of who.”

“It’s a political idiom from back home,” Alice said. She shook her head. “Don’t worry about it.”

Rassmussin coughed loudly, and Alice closed her eyes and grimaced. She got to her feet, and Moonsock tuned her lute behind her.

Alice took up the starting position.

“Five, six, seven, eight,” Rassmussin counted, and they began.

It wasn’t something Alice would have choreographed herself, if she’d had the inclination. It wasn’t her preferred music, either.

But Rassmussin was the troupe’s dancemaster for a reason. He’d seen what she could do, plucked out the parts that could be used, refined them as best he could by pushing her nose to the grindstone for weeks, and worked her to the bone.

And it wasn’t what _she_ would have done, but she didn’t have what she needed for that. What she had was a man whose specialty lay in creating interesting shows for towns across Europa.

Alice could work with that.

Mostly.

They ran the piece three times, and he gave her critical feedback every time. Never good enough. Always a step out of place. Always a kick that didn’t go high enough, a turn that landed badly, a swinging arm that went too far or not far enough.

She got to sit down and drink some more water after that.

“I think you’ll be ready by the next village,” Rassmussin said.

“Wait, what?” Alice demanded. She turned to stare at him in horror. “No, no way, I am _not_ ready. I can’t even do a full jumping split, and you’ve had me drilling that one for weeks!”

“You can and you will,” Rassmussin said. His tone brooked no argument. “The Countess and Master Payne agreed, as has André.”

“I think so, too,” Moonsock said.

Alice looked from one to the other and back, eyes wide.

“We see the mistakes because we know the dance,” Rassmussin said. He tapped his fingers against the curve of his cane. “The audience won’t. You will be strange and new, and they will be too distracted by your oddity to analyze your dancing.”

“At least until we get to a _really_ big down, like Sturmhalten or Beetleburg or Mechanicsburg,” Moonsock pointed out. “They’re likelier to have enough nobles and loose cash to have people with more… discerning tastes.”

“Joy,” Alice said flatly. Her heart pounded, and it wasn’t just the leftover adrenaline and exertion. “I really don’t think I’m ready.”

“You are,” Rassmussin said. “And you don’t have a choice.”

“You’ll do fine, girl,” Moonsock said, clapping Alice on the back. “Now, as soon as you finish that shower, I’m going to take you to talk to Organza about a stage costume. She’s got a lot of ideas.”

Alice laughed, well aware that her face probably looked anything but happy.

o.o.o.o.o

The costume was beautiful.

It was made of a material that _let her_ move, definitely, and there were red and orange and yellow strips of fabrics that fluttered as she moved, like flaming feathers and glittering brass at her joints and—

She loved the costume.

The dance shoes were a deep red and on a slight heel, just high enough to be noticeable while still low enough that she wasn’t hurting by dancing in them.

Alice ran through a few of her sequences, tentative but enjoying the swish of the skirt that trailed behind her without obscuring the ruddy brown tights in the front, the way the more solid pieces flared when she kicked her leg up high or suddenly turned at the end of a stage-crossing sashay.

…Alice _really_ loved her costume.

They sat her down before the show, just a little ways before the play. Her hair was tugged back into a tight bun and spiked through with decorative feathers that followed the color scheme, and her face was…

She gasped when they showed her the mirror.

It was all painted around the decorated sports glasses, the ones they’d taken to calling performance goggles; they had attachment points that meant they’d be able to switch out what the decorations looked like as plans changed. She looked vaguely inhuman behind what looked like nothing so much as a lensed Venetian mask. The bridge came down over her nose with the illusion of a beak, her cheeks were speckled with colors like flames, and there was an odd metallic sheen where there weren’t painted feathers.

Alice wasn’t sure why they’d agreed to go in so hard with the Phoenix thing, but she was happy for it. Flames and feathers were a great theme to have. Mixing it with the ‘not quite a clank’ thing was… interesting.

She struck a pose, like a mannequin, as she looked in the mirror. She twitched her head, birdlike, and then again with the jolting movement of a robot, of a _clank_.

Okay. Yes. She could work with this.

“Do that again,” Organza said.

Alice turned to look at Organza and the Countess, and then considered. She sank into the mental state she’d built back when she’d regularly cosplayed the kind of inhuman women and beings that had so often caught her attention.

She wasn’t human right now. She wasn’t supposed to be. She was beyond that, eldritch and unfeeling and confused by petty concerns.

(Leah and Idris and Blue and Vastra and Wanda and… well. It was mostly Leah. Leah who was handmaiden to the goddess of death, a hallucination given human form, a woman ripping her way from inevitability to forge her own path.)

Alice blinked slowly, her body taking on the loose stillness of a starting form, and then tilted her head in a slow, even movement.

She blinked again.

Her hand twitched, shoulder came up, arm swung out, elbow now bent, bring it in, face the palm up, head tilt again, double blink, tilt the other way.

No emotion on the face save for a distant curiosity. That was key.

“Oh yes, that does the trick,” the Countess muttered. “We’ll tone it down a little for the more suspicious towns; if they think you might _actually_ be a construct, they might attack.”

“Pity,” Alice said, voice even. She relaxed her stance, brought her hands down to lightly clasp them in front of her skirt, and tilted her head again. “I enjoy this.”

The Countess smiled, and said, “I can see that.”

“Glad to hear it!” Organza said, but there was an odd and calculating look in her eye.

Then the pushed her out onto the stage.

o.o.o.o.o

It went well.

It went better than she’d expected, though she’d certainly _hoped_ for a reception like the one she’d gotten.

Her Romanian wasn’t anywhere near good enough to participate in the plays themselves, yet, but if she stayed in costume and wandered the camp, still ‘in character’ as her stage persona, people paid attention. She did her best to smile mysteriously and point them at the play.

One man angrily asked her a question, getting up in her space, and she stumbled back before he could get close enough to trigger the quantum destabilization.

“Hey, hey, hey, I’m not… I don’t speak Romanian that well,” Alice stammered out. She tried to grasp for words that they’d understand, but the panic locked that vocabulary away. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you want and—”

A large, hairy back covered her field of vision, and it took a moment to realize that it was Yeti.

He spoke calmly, too fast for her to understand, and the local man stalked off in a huff. Alice realized that she was holding her hands up to her chest, nails of one hand digging in her palm as the other squeezed it tighter, tighter, ti—

She forcibly relaxed her hands as Yeti turned around, but didn’t pull them down.

“Thank you,” she managed. “Um, what did he…”

“He wanted to know if you were sparkwork,” Yeti explained. He put a hand on her shoulder, large and warm, and squeezed. “This is a medium-sized town. They are usually willing to give the benefit of the doubt, especially in exchange for a night of entertainment, but there are still extremists.”

Alice shuddered. “That’s unfortunate.”

“It is,” Yeti said.

It was hard to forget that he couldn’t just wipe off some facepaint and move a little differently if he wanted to seem normal. Alice could fake normal if she had to. She was outwardly unassuming when she was out of costume.

Yeti was big, and hairy, and was very hard to miss.

‘Background wow’ was all well and good, and she’d seen the theory from the novel playing out in real time a dozen times over by now, but that didn’t change the fact that Yeti still had to tread carefully in the smaller towns, and with no option of just taking off a costume to make it all stop.

Something tugged on her skirt.

Alice looked down to see a small child, no older than three or four, pulling at one of her ‘flames’ and staring at her with wide eyes and an open mouth.

She stepped back into character, and slowly leaned forward like her spine was hinged, jolting to stop in a way that threatened to overbalance her.

“Salut,” she said, because she’d at least drilled enough vocabulary to remember a _few_ things. She could do this. It had only been a few weeks, but she was immersed in Romanian whenever she didn’t _need_ to understand everything for rehearsal or something.

The child didn’t reply.

In slow Romanian, hopefully sounding more ‘deliberately odd’ than ‘halting from unsureness,’ she said, _“Child, where is your mother?”_

He pointed somewhere behind himself, and Alice looked up to see a young woman, perhaps a few years her senior, watching them with sharp eyes. She wasn’t interfering quite yet.

There was distant music. The play wasn’t over, not yet, but maybe intermission?

Alice stood up straight, looking down at the child with what she _hoped_ was a softer version of her Distantly and Dispassionately Curious Inhuman expression.

He stared up at her.

 _“A dance,”_ she said. _That_ word wasn’t necessarily basic vocabulary, but given her new job, it was a common one she heard.

 _Pas de chat_ , first. Even before she’d really gone all-in on dancing, it had been something she enjoyed. Simple enough, too, at least for her. She followed it up with a spin.

She gestured at the child.

He seemed to realize what she meant, and tried to copy her.

She managed to catch him before he fell, on the spin. The pas de chat hadn’t exactly been the best, either, but he was, what, five at the most?

Alice tilted her head when he stared at her, and then stood up straight again. Okay. New plan.

She brought up one knee, leg bent so that her foot was just barely touching her other knee, held one arm out to the side, and another up above her head. She was never going to be a ballerina, not with how late she’d started all this, but Gospodin Rassmussin had… well, she was _pretty_ sure he had more than a little experience with ballet, given how much of the training had involved ballet terms and poses and jumps.

The child tried to copy her, managing an approximation with short and untrained limbs, repeatedly dropping his foot and bringing it up again as he lost his balance. Alice dropped her own pose to step closer. She took hold of his hands, helped him balance on one leg as he’d had trouble doing, and turned him around a few times, walking in circles to help him.

He stepped down after a few, stumbling a big with dizziness, and Alice couldn’t help the grin. She couldn’t really help the laugh that escaped her, either, and then she walked him over to his mom and waved goodbye as the woman carried him away. The mom seemed pleased, at least, and the kid was giving her the scrunching fingers goodbye wave characteristic to so many children.

Alice smoothed down her skirts and turned around, still smiling, and turned back to Yeti.

There was a look on her face that immediately had her smile fading. He looked… not in pain. Not worried, either. Concerned, though. Surprised. Maybe a little sad.

(Zeetha wasn’t here, but Alice had not yet seen a Muse. She knew the timeline. She could guess why.)

“Are you okay?” Alice asked, coming closer. “You look kinda sick.”

Yeti shook his head. “Sorry. You just reminded me of a girl that used to be part of the circus. She left recently. We are all still a little shaken by how.”

That was a pretty way to talk about losing Tinka.

“I’m sorry,” Alice offered.

“It is alright,” Yeti said. He grinned and lightly cuffed her shoulder. “You did not know.”

She had.

“You are good with kids,” he said, instead. “Also, I need to ask: what is… ‘kinda’?”

Alice blinked, and then winced. “Sorry. Kinda is ‘kind of.’ I’m trying to avoid shortened versions like that, since you guys don’t have experience with my home’s version of English, but it’s very… ingrained.”

“How difficult does it get?” he asked.

Alice bit her lip and looked away. She took a moment to put the sentence together in her head, just a bunch of different contractions they likely didn’t have in Albia’s England, and said, “Well, ya ain’t gonna wanna go ‘round askin’ questions like that, or Imma have ta start answerin’ them like Ah would back ‘ome.”

Yeti stared at her.

Alice shrugged, not bothering to hide the little smile on her face. “That was… only a little exaggerated. I didn’t even do y’ain’t or y’all’d’ve or any of the L.I. soccer mom stuff.”

“Do I want to know what an L.I. soccer mom is?” Yeti hazarded.

Alice snorted. She thought back to work, thought about the daily customers that had lived on Long Island their entire lives, about the Brooklyn and Queens influences that crossed the counties, and… “It’s… they’re just a kind of woman that was really common back home. Upper middle class, kind of entitled, got _really_ annoyed if you didn’t fill their order as fast as they wanted, or didn’t somehow magically keep track of every part of what they wanted. They also had accents that were… pretty noticeable. I lived in the area for a while. The accent gets all stuck in your head, even seems normal after a while… and I worked the job for long enough that I stopped noticing most of it unless it was _really_ strong.”

“Like?” he prompted.

“Coffee,” she said, twisting the vowel just the way she’d heard it day in and day out at work. She leaned into it. “Mall. Call. Water. There’s a lotta dropped Rs in there, too. Plenty of folks that just don’t understand how all these people can’t hear their own accents when they’re this strong!”

He laughed at her. “I can honestly say I have not heard English spoken like that before.”

Alice grinned and shrugged, spinning as they walked towards the main stage again, just to feel the swish of the skirt. “I had friends who were linguistics students. They studied language structure and accents and how brains work while acquiring new languages. One of them found my accent annoying because I had bits and pieces of a lot of places.”

“Which places?” Yeti asked.

Alice… did not stop walking. She _didn’t_ , but she did lose the energy in it, and she did stop smiling. “I can’t answer that.”

“I thought so,” he said, He didn’t seem bothered at least. “So. You like working with kids?”

Alice took a moment to follow the switch in subject, and then shrugged. “I guess? I do in the short term, but I don’t think I’d be good with kids for more than a few hours at a time. I liked it when they came by the store, though; they’d always laugh and wave if I took a moment to say hello.”

“You did well with the one back there,” Yeti said.

“Taking a moment to make a little kid’s day brighter is easy,” Alice said. “They’re usually not hard to entertain, at least for a few moments, and then you can just pass them back off to their parents, who are probably just happy that the kid isn’t screaming or crying or something.”

“And her true colors are revealed,” Yeti said.

Alice stuck her tongue out at him.

* * *

 

[1] For a complete translation of the journals to modern French, there is a set translated by Simon Voltaire himself, including a foreword. This translation from English to Romanian was done by Inna Maximenko, the author of this very book. Maximenko’s translation has been corroborated by several sources, including Simon Voltaire himself. That said, the translations are always hotly debated, and the most accurate contemporary translations have had input from other Dreen-Gifts, most recently Jason Valentine. Valentine acted as a reference for Maximenko’s translation prior to his death in the first attacks of the Other War.


	7. The Muse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of things happen this chapter. Unfortunately, none of them end very well for Alice.

_Ding!_

Alice’s twitched a little at the noise. The general low murmur of activity in the camp was distant at the moment, but the little bell had been closer.

Much closer.

_Ding!_

Alice turned her head towards the noise, frowning, and—

Oh.

The props wagon.

Alice bit her lip, already running the scenario through her head. She was alone, despite being fairly close to the middle of the camp. She knew what was in the prop wagon. Technically speaking, she wasn’t _banned_ from going inside, but she didn’t really have an official reason to enter, either.

_Ding! Ding! Ding!_

Well. The lady did insist…

Alice climbed the short stairs to the door of the wagon, the worn-smooth grain of the door handle cool to the touch. She opened the door, and stepped into a room draped in fabric and tools and things with no obvious purpose.

In the middle of it all, in the only clear area, in the pride of place, sat Moxana.

Alice closed the door silently behind her and approached slowly. The board in front of Moxana was felted and green, rather than a checkered pattern, and there was a stack of cards in front of her.

“Hello, Moxana.”

Moxana didn’t move.

With the scraping noise of wood on wood, Alice pulled a short stool over and sat on it, legs crossed and hands linked around her knees. She watched Moxana for a long moment, and then sighed. “I’m guessing you know something about me, then?”

Moxana’s hands came down from her mouth, though her eyes were still closed, and she flipped over the card at the top of the deck.

Alice leaned in to take a closer look.

_The Oracle_

“I can’t say I recognize it,” Alice admitted. “But I also don’t know the Queen’s Tarot. I can guess what this one means, though.”

Moxana’s eyes slid open with a quiet click.

“I can’t read the cards,” Alice said. “I’m sorry. I’m good at connecting meanings I already know, or inventing them, but I don’t know any of yours.”

Moxana blinked once, and then the tarot set was gone, the board flipped to red and white squares.

A king.

Nine pawns. Seven silver, one black, one white.

Moxana pulled two of the silver to the side, one of which was cracked down the middle of the little bulb at the top, and then separated them. She put her hands to either side of the board, as though to say “here it is; have at it,” and looked at Alice with an unchanging stare.

A king. Nine pawns. The colors…

“I know where two of them are,” Alice said. A pulsing grew in the back of her head, a warning, and her vision went hazy for a moment. She gasped sharply and put a hand to her temple. Had she shifted out of reality? Destabilized? It certainly felt like she had. The nausea of being pulled apart without pain was awful. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can tell you where. It’s too early.”

Moxana’s hand tapped each of the remaining seven pawns, two by two, in random sets.

“Which ones?” Alice asked. Moxana folded her hands again, which was probably meant as a confirmation. “I don’t… hm.”

She let the names rest at the tip of her tongue, let them build before she said them, just in case the warning returned. It didn’t. “Otilia and Prende.”

Moxana nodded. She tapped the cracked pawn, and Alice winced.

“She’s… alive,” Alice decided. She couldn’t say too much. God, there was so much she wanted to say but she _knew_ why she wasn’t allowed. That didn’t make it easier, not when Moxana’s face held such hope. “I can’t say more.”

Moxana tapped the cracked pawn again, and then the other seven in turn.

Alice blinked, frowned, thought for a moment, and then, “Oh, a damage report?”

Moxana folded her hands again.

The pressure returned, not shifting her out of phase, not pulling her to the brink and back again and again and again, but still… there. Still warning her. No further, little gift. “I’m—I’m sorry, that’s beyond me. I _know_ , I promise, but I can’t _tell_ you.”

Moxana blinked slowly, and then the pieces were gone.

Alice bit her lip, fingers digging into her knees, and said, “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you more.”

Moxana closed her eyes, and resumed her earlier position.

Alice waited.

Her stomach growled, the nausea from the earlier warning digging deep and bloating her. She ignored it with practiced ease.

She waited a little longer, and then sighed.

She stood up, pushed the stool back over to where it had been before with her foot, and hesitated.

“It was nice to… speak? I guess? With you.”

Moxana didn’t respond.

Alice backed away towards the door, fumbled with the handle behind herself, and stepped carefully backwards onto the steps.

She closed the door. She did not lift her hand from the handle.

She stayed there for a while.

 _Someone knew_.

_Someone knew what she was._

And she couldn’t even _have a real conversation_.

Her fingers tightened on the handle as something in her chest curled inwards and—

“Alice?”

She stiffened, and then turned. She was pretty sure the look on her face wasn’t doing her reputed mental state any favors. She smiled weakly. “Herr de la Scala. Nice to see you.”

He looked between her and the wagon a few times. “What were you doing in there?”

“Wanted to see the props,” Alice said. She swayed on the spot a little, turned to fix her eyes on the door. “She’s beautiful, you know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The clank at the table,” Alice said, turning to meet his eyes again. Her stomach twisted. “She’s gorgeous.”

“Yes, we’ve had Moxana for quite some time,” Abner said. He came closer, a cautious look in his eyes. “Are you… quite alright?”

“Oh, yes, I’m fine,” Alice said. She tried to smile again. “My stomach’s just giving me some trouble. It’s normal, though. Happens a lot.”

“If you’re sure,” Abner said. He finally made it to her side, and held up a hand to help her down. “I don’t suppose you—”

This was the point at which Alice lost consciousness.

o.o.o.o.o

_“—too strong, it has overloaded the human mind, she is—”_

**_“—more cautious than the last, more pliable than the one before. It need not be so strong—”_ **

****

**_“—p͗ͧͫ̉̾͋u̶̘̟͎̳̤ͨ̆͐ͣ͊̑t̗͚͎̖͕̭́̂ͪ̾̆͛ͧ ̳͍̜̖̼̘̥ͬͭ̇̂̊ͨ̌it̠̖͔̣̖̥ ̣̠̖̹ͥ̃̉͂ͮͣ͝ͅa̡͖l̹̺̝̥̘̣l̸̖̙̖̒̎͑ͩ́ͪ ̞̩͕̟͇̱̟͗̓ͦ̾ͣ͑̒b̷͍̘̘͉a̟̖̭̮̣ͩͫ͑c̼͍̼̪͉͗͂ͪͦͭ͝k͕̤͉͕͋ ̵̒̅t͚ỏ̋͐͌͏͙̗̩̹͇g̗̟̫͕͉̊̊́ͩͣ̉́e͎̟͍̜̱̬̞̅͟t́̚͏̤h͇͓̺̺͙͍̉̒e̖͙̩͋ͥͭ̍r͉͉̘̟͉̗,ͨ̉ͦ͗ͦ͒̏ ̗ș̸͈͎̳̪͇̩ͨͩͤh͙͙͚̬̞ͮ̓́̒̚e̘̳̭̯ͪ̊̀̾̂͆͝ ̰h͊ͣ͊ͪ͠a̯͕̯̙̤͂ͨͧ͆ͨͧ͞ş͓ ͓̲̩ñ̕e̙͓͉ͬ̀̈̑̔ͮẻ̞̭̊̊̎̒͘d̛̩̆̌̄̔ͫͫ̈ ̲ͬ͋̇͛ͦ̍͆ṯ͚̯̼ͥ͟o͚̓ ͖͖͕̿̏̇̓a̱̠͉̼̳̣͈͌ͬw̯̰̯̻͇̭ͫ͌ͫa̳͈̬͕̾ͣͤͨ͘k̘͔̪e͉̞̞͉̬͍͎ͯͯ̑̅͑͐͊ ̘̯̼̫̅͋e̝͖͙͆͌̋ͧ̓̒̋v͖͈̙̭̭́e̴̲̬̘̖͖̙͖̍̀̈́͑ņ̗͔̼ͪt̹̩̣̘̣̀u̗͊̓̎̈̽̈̓à̮͇͙̫̪ͥ̍ͣl̺̝̪̞̫̲͆ͫl͎̯̠̇͂͂̊̉ỵ̘—”_ **

****

**“—s̭̠̜̝̖̹͎̎̄ͤͥ͗c̗͍̜ͦa͖̬̘͈͛ͮͬ̊ͣ̊̓l̮̩̝̹̻͖ͪ͗ȅ͕̰ͣ̂ i͚̲̥͝tͪ̊ͪ͗̽ͤ͊͝ ̵̫͚͂̒̆b̛͍͈͎̒̆̽͂̋a͇̫ͨ͆ͭ̍cͧ̽͏̟͓k̭͇͖̤̬̪ͯ̅͗̊ͅ ̶̝͚̬͕͚́̐ͧ̇ͅi͎ͩn̛͍͕̬̝͕̈́̄̀͗ ̟̜͗t̬̲ͥͨ͗ͧhͮ͜ḙ̂̓̏̍̉̚ ͎̲͙ͪ̎ͬ̈̅̾f̵ͭͫ́ͪ͂̔ṷ̲̬͈̉ͬ͂̃̌̌͜t̔̂̅͛̓u̥͆̽ͨͤ̕r̸̼̦̳͇͖͌e̗̪͓͇̰,̫̱̳͈̠̠̖ͦ̌ͫͭ̇ ̮͔̦͍ͯ̋̐ͫ̅ͮͅt̹̞͓̞͙̯͓̓͗hͩ͗ͣ͋́e͙͙̙̠̥ͥͫͅͅň̻͚͖̳ͤ̀—"**

o.o.o.o.o

She woke up in her own bed, slow and meandering and full of a resistance to the very idea of moving. God, she didn’t even want to blink her eyes open. Stillness was so much easier.

Why was she in bed?

“I know you’re awake.”

Ah. The Countess. That was… a sign that Alice needed to wake up. Get up.

Any day now.

Any minute.

Come on.

“Alice.”

It took more effort and another thirty seconds for Alice to dig up the motivation to more than lay there.

Oh, goodie. Bad brain day ahoy.

Alice managed to roll over and open her eyes.

The Countess was sitting on Olga’s bed, arms crossed, frowning.

Alice blinked at her.

It took three entire seconds to open them again.

“Hi,” she croaked out. Ow. Her throat felt… raw.

“Sit up, if you can,” the Countess said, reaching out to the side to grab—oh, water.

Water sounded nice right now.

“You passed out,” the Countess told her. “And then there was quite a lot of screaming.”

Alice blinked again, and a good ten seconds later, she levered herself up into a sitting position.

God, that was—exhausting. She wanted to lie back down.

“Drink,” the Countess ordered.

Alice drank.

The water was cool, but not iced, and felt good on her abused throat. Alice coughed a little at the end, the last swallow having gone down the wrong pipe, and felt the Countess pluck the empty glass from her hand before she could drop it.

Alice sat back once she finished coughing, leaning against the wood of the wagon wall and closing her eyes.

“What happened?” the Countess asked. It wasn’t the kind of question a person was supposed to deflect.

“It won’t happen again,” Alice said, and then coughed again. _Fuck_. “Probably.”

“What _was_ it?” The Countess asked.

Alice opened her eyes and looked at the woman across from her, someone who balanced a matronly concern with a sincere distaste for people bringing trouble to her circus, and couldn’t think of a satisfactory answer. “It’s something left over from my… employers.”

“From before the circus?” the Countess prodded.

Alice closed her eyes again and nodded.

“What caused it?”

“Said something I—well, no. I _considered_ saying something I shouldn’t have, and it kicked in anyway,” Alice coughed again. Her throat felt like fire. “Hair-trigger reaction, apparently.”

The Countess’s frown deepened.

“Sorry,” Alice said, eyes dropping to her knees. “I really can’t say more.”

“If _that_ is what happens when you try to let information slip, then at least I can understand why,” the Countess said. She waited a few seconds, and then said, “I don’t suppose you can tell me what you were doing in the props wagon?”

Alice shrugged. “I was in a theater class in high school, mostly behind the scenes. I wanted to look at what you guys had lying around that I hadn’t seen yet.”

“And?”

Alice blinked at her knees, made her decision, because she already _had_ admitted as much to Abner… “I got distracted by the clank you have in the middle. She’s absolutely gorgeous.”

“Moxana,” the Countess said, and Alice bit her tongue before she could say _I know_. “She’s been with us for a very long time. Unfortunately, the last person to be able to run her died in an attack half a year ago. We haven’t had much reason to bring her out, since.”

“Pity,” Alice said. She let the smile grow on her face, didn’t try to hide it. “She’s beautiful.”

The Countess’s eyebrow rose. “Oh? I didn’t know you had an eye for machinery.”

“I don’t,” Alice said immediately, startling half a laugh out of the Countess. “I just have an eye for aesthetic, I think. I don’t know if she’s beautiful to an engineer, though I’d guess she is; I _do_ know she’s beautiful from a purely visual perspective, though.”

Alice felt her eyes unfocus, and considered trying to fix that but… well.

She was tired. She was so damn tired, still.

“Can I go back to sleep, now?” Alice asked.

The Countess made a noise that could have meant anything, and then stood up. Alice’s eyes refocused.

“I’ll speak with Master Payne,” the Countess said. “But you’ll have to be the one to explain to anyone else who asks.”

Alice winced. “Yes, ma’am.”

o.o.o.o.o

It took ages for Alice to convince everyone that she was fine, that it probably wouldn’t be happening again, and that she could go back to doing her regular duties. And given the snatches of conversation she only barely remembered from her… _incident_ , it was probably going to be happening a lot less. Rassmussin started back in on pushing her to the limit, and then everyone started dropping subtle hints to remind her that every circus act was expected to have _at least_ one other marketable skill than whatever their primary act was. After a few discussion, Alice found herself bundled off to learn aerial silks in such a rush that she barely noticed where she was going until she was already there.

It was…

Hard.

Fun!

But son of a _bitch_ was it hard.

She definitely wasn’t good enough to do silks at the next town, considering the next town was a _city_ , but she was learning… mostly.

“Hands,” Herr Helios barked out, and Alice held them out with the air of a woman who was resigned to reality, as well as to the fact that this was a man who was going to be speaking to her with a child’s vocabulary, since that was all she really had.

“They’re yellow,” Helios noted, a frown marring his brow. “Too cold up there?”

“November is cold,” Alice said, shrugging. “This is normal.”

“You spoke with Countess Marie?” he asked.

Alice nodded, stifling the sigh that was trying to climb its way up out of her throat. Everyone had made it clear that the Countess was the closest thing they had to a doctor, and a specialist in chemistry. Everyone was _also_ still hard at work trying to hide the fact that they were sparks from her. “Yes. She is figuring something out. I think she is working with Madame Fifield to find… um… something that has me warm on the stage.”

Goddammit.

Not enough _words._

Not _fabric_. Not _keep_. Not _retain_ or _material_ or, god forbid, _textiles._

Herr Helios nodded. “You enjoy the stage?”

“I do.”

“There is at least that,” he said, as if it was really helpful. “We will be at Sofia in a week. You will not be an aerialist by then. Not by Niš or Beograd, either. Perhaps Novi Sad.”

“So…”

“March,” Herr Helios said. “Just before we leave the Serbian territories.”

Alice nodded, trying to ignore the twisting in her gut.

She didn’t know how to handle… that.

(She remembered her first language well enough, kind of. She was never as skilled in Serbian as she was in English, not since she’d started school, but she’d been fluent.)

(That didn’t necessarily mean anything in 1889.)

(She was pretty sure she’d be fumbling her way through ever interaction in Serbia, too.)

(That was… going to be a punch in the gut, really. If she couldn’t even understand her home language…)

“Put on some gloves,” Herr Helios decided. “And that… Japanese thing.”

“Haramaki,” Alice said. She’s been using one again, recently. “Um, okay.”

“We’ll go again.”

o.o.o.o.o

Sofia went well.

There was… a rush, to everything. Alice still figured she wasn’t very good, and Gospodin Rassmussin confirmed those suspicions, but she was enough. People were interested, and they clapped, and they appreciated her performance. And there was a rush to that. Adrenaline and oxytocin and dopamine, or whatever the hell was really going on in her brain.

She had a thick, heavy coat for when she wasn’t performing, woolen and itchy, but warm enough. She could even leave it open, sometimes. It wasn’t deep winter yet, and Bulgaria was marginally warmer than the Carpathians were. Probably within reach of the warm air that came in off the warm water currents from the Mediterranean, if Alice was remembering her geography and climate trivia correctly.

She probably wasn’t.

Oh well. No real way to check right now.

She had the option of wandering around.  She did not have the option of wandering around alone.

This was… for a good reason, and one that Alice herself had admitted to, rather than someone else ‘suggesting’ it out of suspicion.

“You’re joking,” Olga laughed.

“I really, _really_ cannot emphasize how easily I get lost,” Alice insisted. English, now. They were all pretty lax about when she used which language in private, and Olga had admitted that she liked practicing English herself. “I mean, I can at least ask for directions? I have enough Romanian for that. But I’d prefer to not rely on possibly hostile strangers.”

“Possibly hostile?” Olga asked.

Alice shrugged, yanking on the tights she’d picked up in the last town. They were woolen and thick and very good at their job. She could actually wear a swishy, loose skirt outside if she put these on. “I don’t… I’m not good at Romanian, I can’t really understand Bulgarian unless they go _very_ slowly, and I’ve already had a few people mistaking me for an actual construct because of my act. I don’t like the idea of dealing with that without the ability to effectively defend myself.”

Olga shrugged. “It’s a bigger town. Well, actually, I think it’s a city. They are much less likely to have an issue on that front than the more isolated villages.”

“You think so?” Alice asked. She’d assumed so, but that didn’t make the worry go away. “I don’t know. I’m still really likely to get lost on my own.”

“That’s fair,” Olga admitted. She pulled on a jacket and clipped it closed. “Does this show off my chest enough?”

“For once, no,” Alice laughed. “It’s cold outside! Skip the sexy, be warm.”

“I would rather be cold,” Olga sniffed, then broke down into some laughs of her own. “What about you? I haven’t seen you finding any partners of your own since you started traveling with us.”

Alice blinked, smile fading as she paused in tying her skirt off. “Um. I’m not really… interested in one-night stands.”

Olga mouthed the words, brow furrowing, and then nodded. “I think I know what you mean by that. What about the boys in camp? You’re pretty close in age to some of them.”

“Uh, personality mismatch,” Alice said. She pulled her hair back, tied it off, and started pulling on her boots. “I don’t really get along well enough with anyone for a romance.”

“Oh, you are a _romantic_ ,” Olga teased. “You don’t want to be swept away, no, you want a _long courtship_.”

Alice blinked at her. “I’m pretty sure courtship isn’t a common word for—”

“I borrowed some romance novels of the Countess’s to practice,” Olga interrupted. “I wanted to surprise you.”

Alice stuck her tongue out. “You mean tease me.”

“Yes, that too.”

Alice snorted, finished pulling on her coat, and then tugged on some thick gloves and a newsboy cap.

“You really need those?” Olga asked.

“If I’m not sweating to death with the dancing or silks, then yes. I really, _really_ do,” Alice said. “Do you want me to lose my fingers?”

“No,” Olga said. “But I do wonder about how you survived winters before, since you said it was colder where you were before.”

Alice shrugged. “You get used to it eventually.”

Olga’s eyebrows crawled upwards, but she shrugged, and they left.

o.o.o.o.o

Olga and Lars ended up accompanying her to a small, midscale bar. Olga found and left with someone pretty quickly, and Lars was chatting up some girls in a corner, so Alice headed for the actual bar and tried to understand the menu. It was available in Romanian and Bulgarian.

She was fluent in neither.

Some Jägerkin had come in earlier, Wulfenbach troops, and had taken a corner of the room. They’d scared some patrons out in doing so, but they were ordering plenty and not making _too_ much of a ruckus, so they hadn’t been kicked out yet, either.

“Are you going to order?” the barmaid asked.

Alice opened her mouth, closed it, and offered the woman a smile. “My Romanian is poor. I am still reading the menu.”

The woman snorted, and leaned against the bar. “Okay, sweetie. You have any questions?”

“I came here with friends, and do not like alcohol,” Alice said, painstakingly slowly. “So I have trouble with… to find drinks without alcohol?”

Ugh, conjugations.

“What is your other language?” The barmaid asked. “I know some.”

“English, mostly,” Alice said. “And Serbian, though less well.”

The barmaid’s eyes lit up. “I would have to go slowly, but I think you may be able to understand Bulgarian, then.”

Alice shrugged. “I need to practice Romanian.”

The woman shrugged. “Understandable. You said you don’t want alcohol?”

Alice shrugged. “No alcohol, nothing with, uh…”

She couldn’t think of the word, then tried switching languages. “Ništa gazirano?”

“Carbonated,” The woman told her, and then nodded. “There’s coffee here. Tea. We have juices, for some mixers.”

“Is there a list of juice?” Alice asked.

“Here,” the woman said, pointing to a section of the menu. “If you need help, I—”

“Ima višnja!”

“Or that,” the woman laughed. “I suppose you’ll be wanting that one, then?”

“Yes, and water,” Alice said, smiling at the woman as she passed the menu back. “Sugar, maybe.”

“One moment,” the woman said, turning away to dig among the bottles.

Sour cherry juice! They had some! This was… good. It had been a while.

A hand tapped her shoulder. “Hoy, iz hokay eefen Hy seet here?”

Alice turned, jolted in shock, blinked, and… “I’m sorry?”

“Ken Hy seet vit hyu?” The Jäger asked. He was bright yellow, with green eyes that had absolutely massive irises, and a purple top hat that looked like it had seen better days.

Alice felt her brow furrow. “I don’t… understand.”

The Jäger’s smile fell a little.

“I do not speak Romanian well,” Alice tried to explain. It wasn’t even that she was scared of them; it wasn’t like they could hurt _her_ , and these were Wulfenbach troops, which meant they weren’t exactly looking for civilians to rough up. It was just, well, she had trouble if someone spoke too fast, let alone with such a strong accent. “So I cannot understand.”

“He asked if he can sit there,” the barmaid said, coming back with the drinks. She eyed the Jäger with suspicion. “Don’t think he realized the accent is a problem.”

“Oh,” Alice said, blinking. “Um. I don’t care.”

“Vot is hyu language, den?” the Jäger asked, enunciating a little more this time. “Hy know lots!”

“Um… English, mostly,” Alice said. She hesitated, “And Serbian.”

“Hy know both!” the Jäger told her cheerfully. He switched to English, and while the accent was still present, it was definitely a lot easier to understand. “So, hyu eezn’t local, den?”

“I’m with the circus,” Alice told him. “Master Payne’s. We’re set up in gradska gradina.”

“Vot kind of circus?”

“A…” Alice cringed, remembering who she was talking to, “A traveling Heterodyne Show, actually.”

“An actress?” the Jäger asked.

“I’m a dancer, actually,” Alice admitted. “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

“Hy am Andris!” the Jäger informed her proudly. “And hyu?”

“Alice,” she said. She took a sip of her drink, not entirely sure where to take this next. “Should I ask what you’re doing in Bulgaria?”

“Hoy, vas a beeg ting vit de local politiks,” Andris said, rolling his eyes. Oh, there _was_ a sclera. “Ve had to come and be de muscle for some Empire deeplomats.”

“Not much fun?” Alice asked.

“No fighteenk,” Andris said, and then grinned at her and slung an arm over her shoulder. “But ve get to take some time on de ground and talk to de vimmen!”

Alice blinked at him, took a deep breath, and asked, “I’m sorry, have you been flirting?”

“Vell, yes?” Andris blinked right back at her. The black strip of hair on his head rippled, front to back. It kind of made him look like a hyena who got some weird fish genes. “Hy thought eet vas obvious?”

Alice winced and carefully pushed his arm off of her shoulder. “Right. So. I’m sorry if I gave off some… mixed signals, but I, um… well, I prefer women.”

Andris’s eyes widened, and he pulled his arm back onto the counter. “Oh! Vell, dot’s fair. But, hey, vun of de gorls in my squad, Dinreel, she vas—”

“And,” Alice cut him off, still feeling a little like she wanted to sink into the floor and not come out again, “I’m not really the type to go for one-night stands. So… yeah. I’m happy to talk? But I’m not, er… interested in anything _carnal_ or whatever.”

“Hey, eez fair,” Andris said, shrugging. “Eez not hyu thing, yeah? And hyu iz villing to talk vit me, vich is lots compared to many ceevileean vimmen.”

“I’d buy that,” Alice muttered, taking another sip of her drink. “Although I—”

“Hey, Alice, this guy bothering you?”

Lars’s arm was around her shoulder, and he was uncomfortable close and tense and—oh. Sweet guy, but unnecessary, this time.

“No, we are… okay,” Alice told him, once again struggling through Romanian, patting his hand. “Andris, this is Lars. He plays Bill in the shows. He is very good.”

Lars leaned in close, whispering in her ear. “You’re really okay?”

“I’m fine,” Alice told him. “He is polite.”

“Hy eez not goink to flirt vit a gorl vot don’t like me dat vay!” Andris claimed, puffing out his chest and jabbing a thumb at himself. “Hy am a _gentleman._ ”

One of the jagers from the group at the table yelled over, “Hyu eez a big joke vot forgets to brush heez teeth before talking to the civvie gorls!”

Alice was still trying to parse through the sentence when Andris finished yelling back something unintelligible of his own, and then turned to them again. “Hy promise Hy’m not going to make vit de sveet talk to a gorl vot isn’t interested.”

Lars’s hand tightened around Alice’s shoulders.

“Go back to the pretty girls,” Alice told him, lightly elbowing him the side. “I will be fine.”

“…okay,” Lars said, and pulled away. “Yell if you need me.”

“Sure,” Alice said, smiling a little as he left. It was nice to have someone willing to come to her defense against a monster as scary as a Jäger.

“Goot friend?” Andris asked.

“Nah, just a coworker,” Alice told him. “Sweet, though.”

“He vos verra scared of me,” Andris noted. “Hy could smell it.”

“You’re Wulfenbach troops in a big town, and he’s got a lot of people willing to talk if something goes wrong,” Alice said, shrugging. “I think he knew it was unlikely to lead to a fight or any big trouble. I have an idea of what he’d do for a girl he _really_ likes, and that’s a lot more intense than just intervening in a bar flirtation.”

“Hyu’ve seen it?” Andris asked.

“Nah, but I know what he’s like,” Alice said, looking over to where Lars was talking to the girls again. “Whatever girl manages to catch that boy’s heart for good is going to be very lucky.”

“Hyu iz verra sure of dot.”

“He’s a good guy,” Alice said, shrugging.

“Hyu gots an eye on enny gorls?” Andris asked.

Alice took a sip of her drink so she could think of a real answer. “Well… not really. My last relationship ended poorly. Haven’t really gone looking since then.”

“But hyu like talking vit pretty gorls ennyvay?” Andris asked.

Alice considered that, and then shrugged. “Well, who doesn’t?”

Andris tossed back his head and laughed at that. Alice hid her own proud little smile behind her glass.

“Hoy! Dinreel! Come talk vit de cute gorl!”

“Whoa, that really isn’t necessa—hi,” Alice said, feeling the embarrassment curl in her chest as a Jäger woman broke off from the group and came closer. “Um. Sorry about this.”

“Hyu look verra surprised,” Dinreel said, draping herself over Andris’s back and resting her chin on his shoulder. English, still. That was a relief.

“I wasn’t expecting today to include Jägerkin trying to matchmake for me,” Alice said as flatly as she could manage.

“Matchmake?” Dinreel asked, rabbit ears perking up and turning towards Alice. “Vot’s dis?”

“Hy’m tinking she might like hyu better dan me,” Andris sighed, resting a melodramatic hand against his forehead. “She sez she doesn’t vant de sexy schtuff, but likes talking to de pretty gorls, and hyu iz de pretty vun.”

“Hy eez also de better fighter,” Dinreel said. She was very furry, and blue, and short, and her tail came up and grabbed Andris’s drink while he was glaring at her. Dinreel dropped her hand back, took the drink she’d stolen, and raised it to her lips.

“Hoy, dot’s mine!”

“Sez who? Eet doesn’t heff hyur name on it!”

Alice brought a hand up to her mouth to hide her smile. Oh god. She was _cute_. She could also definitely bench press Alice, so that was… something.

“So, hyu eez a circus gorl?” Dinreel asked, still fighting to keep the drink away from Andris. “Hyu play any instruments?”

“Not well,” Alice admitted. “I’m a dancer, mostly.”

“Hoy, mebbe ve come and watch de show, den!” Dinreel said, grinning widely with… wow, those were pointy teeth.

Less enticing, that. Mostly just unnerving.

“Always happy for an audience,” Alice said. “I like your braid, by the way. The color, too; I dyed my hair purple once, but it didn’t work out very well.”

“Hy am lookink at hyu now, and Hy tink hyu vould look verra nize vit purple hair,” Dinreel told her, finally pushing Andris off his stool and taking his spot. “And hy like hyu hat.”

“Oh! Um, thanks,” Alice said, one hand coming up self-consciously to pat it. “I like this style, so… um. Yeah.”

“Dinreel,” Andris hissed. “Dinreel, she’s blushing.”

“Hy can see,” Dinreel said, leaning in and—oh god—taking Alice’s hand and placing a kiss on it. “Iz verra cute.”

_“Um.”_

Dinreel grinned, goofy, and—then paused. She sniffed the air, looked down at Alice’s hand, and then looked up again with wide, yellow, featureless eyes. “Hoy, hyu…”

Alice blinked, leaning away and pulling her hand back. “I?”

Dinreel’s voice fell so low that only Alice, and perhaps Andris or a Jäger with particularly good ears could hear, “Hyu smell like _Dreen-Gift._ ”

Alice felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dinreel is an OC belonging to a friend, ScribeProtra. Go check out her fics!


	8. The Jägerkin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice makes some friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How does one write a Jägerkin accent. I just. How. What is consistency.

_Perhaps one of the least understood of documented Dreen-Gift incidents is that of the_ Shadow of the Future.

_In 1693, the Muse Prende was revealed to the Storm King’s court. As the first of the muses, she was a marvel to the courts. While not spoken of much, it is common knowledge among those who study Van Rijn’s works that the Muses were built with a heavy basis in Dreen-Gift study. Many of the abilities of the Muses that attempted to predict the future in some way, particularly Prende and Moxana, were an attempt at refining the energies that Lady Timothea had been surrounded by. It is believed that the Muses were originally intended to be a set of nine that were presented all at once, but the final result was that the Muses were presented piecemeal, either alone or in smaller sets._

_Prende’s unveiling had been heavily-anticipated, and much of the court was in attendance. The unveiling had gone as planned, but an apparition came partway through. Prende’s orb expanded suddenly, and a young woman was projected from it. Records of the incident suggest that everyone, including Van Rijn and Prende, was surprised by this. The young woman floated a meter or so above the floor, was clothed in a short and simple green dress that was in no way compliant with the fashion of the day, and was screaming in silent pain at her first appearance. Sound came several seconds later, by which point the screaming had stopped, and the young woman regained her composure. She stood straighter, looked around, and then strode to the Storm King and spoke to him. None were close enough to hear what she said, and those who may have been told have never shared the information._

_Of note is that Lady Timothea apparently recognized the young woman, though she too refused to publicly elaborate on what she knew of the incident, save for that she believed the woman to be from a certain point in the future. A common interpretation of this statement is that the woman was an unnamed personage from the Story that Lady Timothea knew, more present in future events than in those of the Storm King’s court. With the loss of Prende, her lantern, and her scrying orb, few have hope that an explanation will ever be found. Those who do expect an explanation believe that the answers lie in Lady Timothea’s journals, and that even that section will eventually be uncensored._

o.o.o.o.o

Oh god.

Oh god no.

Moxana was one thing, that was _expected_ , but a random J—

“Hoy, Meez, please don’t paneek,” Dinreel said. She hesitated, and then dropped Alice’s hand and stepped back. Space. Good. That was good. “Hy’m not goeenk to do ennything scary, Hy promeese.”

Andris looked from Alice to Dinreel and back. He’d caught that then. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“I,” Alice said, and then paused, her mouth too dry to say more. She couldn’t---wouldn’t—didn’t—“I’m going to finish my drink. I am going to pay for it. Then we’re going to go talk somewhere a little quieter.”

Did she look as panicked as she felt? She hoped not. She took a sip of her drink to stall. The taste wasn’t as appealing as it had been a few minutes ago.

“Eez true, den?” Andris asked, leaning forward.

Alice closed her eyes and took in a shaky breath. “Please stop asking.”

The two Jägerkin were silent, and Alice followed through with what she’d promised. She finished her drink, paid for it, and then got up. She offered the barmaid a weak smile.

“They aren’t threatening you or anything, are they?” The woman whispered as Alice passed over a handful of coins.

“It’s fine,” Alice assured her, voice low. “They just… know me from somewhere. It is something I was hoping people would not know, but they do, so I just… need to talk about that. Sorry.”

The woman nodded slowly, and Alice turned to head for the door, but…

“One moment,” she said to Andris and Dinreel, both of whom were lingering by the door with admittedly well-hidden unease of their own.

Alice weaved her way over to where Lars was telling a story to the girls from before, and tapped his shoulder. He craned his head back, caught sight of her, and… the worry was immediate.

“It looks like I need to talk to the Jägerkin,” Alice told him. There was no way to tell him anything without worrying him, but going without telling _anyone_ was a bad idea. “I will be fine.”

“You’re sure?” Lars asked.

“I am,” Alice said. She hesitated. “One of them can show me the way to camp if I get lost again, so you don’t need to worry about that. I just wanted to tell someone, um… so that if something, um… strange? Strange. So that if something strange happens, they will know.”

Lars nodded slowly, eyes searching her face. The girls that had been listening to him had seemed annoyed by the interruption, but at least two of them were whispering now, and Alice could see unease on their faces.

This was probably the least expected of reasons for people to be uncomfortable, but ‘casually engaging with Jägers’ was… still probably not the worst thing these people had ever seen.

“Be safe,” Lars finally said. He reached up and back to awkwardly pat her shoulder. “Olga would be upset if something happened to you, and Rassmussin would be annoyed that he wasted all that time.”

Alice snorted, made the impulsive decision to ruffle his hair, and then swept towards the door. She looked at Andris, and then Dinreel, and then sighed. “Let’s go. Don’t suppose either of you know any good coffee shops in the area with isolated corners?”

o.o.o.o.o

Dinreel knew a coffee shop.

Alice grabbed a café au lait, ignoring the fact that her stomach was going to murder her later, and grabbed a corner seat.

She’d had some time to come to terms with what was happening, and a plan.

Kind of.

She was going to play most of it by ear, honestly, but twelve percent of a plan was better than no plan.

“Hyu eez a Dreen-Gift,” Andris said, his coffee untouched between his clawed hands. “Dinreel vasn’t wrong?”

Alice looked down at her drink. She didn’t want them to check by attacking her. She… she didn’t want them knowing at all, honestly, but the cat was out of the bag and stuffing it back in wasn’t an option, not really.

“How well can you keep a secret?” She asked instead. She raised her head and stared them both in the eyes, first Dinreel and then Andris. “How well can the Jäger army as a _whole_ keep a secret, if it wasn’t ordered by the Heterodyne?”

“Verra good,” Andris said. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “So, eez true.”

Alice looked down at the table. She took a sip of her drink. She tried to figure out how to answer the question.

“It is,” Alice said. She chewed on the inside of her bottom lip, thinking. “I’m going to ask you to not tell anyone yet. I recognize that you might be obligated to tell your generals, maybe Higgs too, but—”

“Hyu know Higgs, den,” Dinreel said. “Dot’s a _verra_ big secret.”

“It’s also far from my only one,” Alice said. “I’m not joking. The stuff I was brought in to work on is… _incredibly_ delicate. If anything changes too early, then… sorry. Things go bad. I can’t tell you how.”

“Bad by vot kind of standards?” Dinreel asked.

“By everyone’s,” Alice said. She could feel her jaw tightening, and forcibly unclenched it. “I’m sorry, I can’t say more, and I’m pretty sure you’ve met Gifts before and know why.”

“Ve haff,” Andris confirmed. “Dis is verra important information, but Hy needs to ask: vhy not tell de Baron? Most Geefts find vays to help from de top.”

“Because the _last_ two Gifts to end up working with Klaus Wulfenbach got statued,” Alice said. She was trying to stay calm. She was kind of succeeding. “I can’t help if I’m forever frozen in time. One of them was… one of them wasn’t even _ten_ yet. She was just a kid. She was trying to help, and messed up, and—they just—”

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “For now I need to keep it a secret from as many people as possible.”

“Including hyu friends,” Andris poked.

“Including the circus, yes,” Alice said. “The plot doesn’t really get rolling for another two and a half years or so. I’m still figuring out how to navigate the world, let alone push it in a direction that isn’t going to damage everything.”

“Vot’s in two and a heff years?” Dinreel asked.

Alice weighed the words on her tongue, felt for that wall that threatened her with the sensation of being ripped apart at a molecular level, and shied away from it. Not too much information; she needed to retain what control she could.

“You will have a Heterodyne,” Alice finally said. The Jägerkin sat up straighter, eyes wide. “If everything goes as it should, the Doom Bell will ring in less than three years.”

“Vhere is he?” Dinreel asked. There was hope in her voice. There was hope in her face. Andris didn’t look much better. “De family has had many friends vot eez Geefts. Mebbe—”

“No,” Alice said. She didn’t like cutting people off, but she had to, right now. She had to say something before they went too far. “The Heterodyne is going to be found, but pre-canon needs to stay _untouched_. There’s so much that relies on coincidences that I _can’t_ afford to mess with it too early.”

The Jägers calmed. Alice didn’t miss the tension that ran through them.

“I’m on your new Heterodyne’s side,” she said. She offered them a smile. “Takes a little more after Bill and Barry than the Old Heterodynes or the Mongfishes. Not completely, but… there’s a kindness there. Respect for others and their independence and free will. A lack of desire to torture. Powerful spark, of course, but… mostly in control of it.”

“Klaus Barry?” Andris asked.

Alice shook her head. “No. As far as I know, he’s… he…”

She trailed off.

A page floated above and before her. As soon as she finished reading, a new one popped up. And another. And another. An entire scene passed by, pages she’d never seen before, and—

_Of course, it was Lucrezia. Of course, that woman had killed God Queens for her own purposes._

The page faded from view, and Alice came back to herself, shaking just slightly and finding herself being eyed by a pair of concerned Jägerkin.

(Of course, they were concerned. She’d just given them _hope_ for a Heterodyne. They didn’t want to lose information now.)

“Sorry,” Alice said.

“Hyu eez hokay?” Dinreel asked.

“I’m fine,” Alice confirmed. “I was brought here before the story had ended, for me. I get… updates, I suppose. More information that I didn’t have when I came here the first time.”

“Hokay,” Andris said. “So. Hyu iz a Dreen-Geeft, and hyu like de next Heterodyne, vot is verra important to de plot hyu know. Hyu doesn’t vant de Baron or ennybody else to know dot hyu exist. Iz dot right?”

Alice nodded.

“Vhy travel vit a circus?” He asked.

“They’re going to be in the right place at the right time, and travelling lets me get a feel for the area, and also means that people will write off the weirdness as a circus thing and not, you know… being what I am,” Alice trailed off, looking away. “I… I’m sorry, but can I please ask you to not tell anyone? I already told you why, but I just… I can’t. I can’t let anyone know. It’s too early, and if things change even a little now, I can’t help the way I’m supposed to.”

“Ken hyu tell us vhy ve can’t know where de Heterodyne is, even a leedle?” Dinreel asked.

Alice opened her mouth. Closed it. Made a face. “The… number of Jägerkin the Heterodyne encounters, how the encounters go, and _when_ the encounters happen are all crucial. Too many and the plot goes sideways and my job is in jeopardy. And I can’t help if I’m statue. You’ll get your Heterodyne either way, but… things will be harder if I can’t do my job.”

“Vun more thing,” Dinreel said. “Hyu smell like a Geeft, and hyu talk like hyu iz vun, but I still… vant to be sure.”

“Please don’t attack me,” Alice said.

“Hyu iz a leedle civvie gorl,” Andris said. “Ve doesn’t vant a fight from a gorl like hyu. Ve just vant to be _sure_.”

“I… think I can do that,” Alice said. The Jägerkin looked at each other, and she was sure they had something else in mind, maybe some pop culture trivia from a previous Dreen-Gift, but she had something more solid.

Kind of.

Probably.

If she could get it to work again.

She looked down at her hand. She focused on it, pulled in the drifting hints of sensation that were just out of reach, barely intelligible to her memory, and _pulled_. The sensation was less uncomfortable when she was in control, and it crawled down to her wrist like a glove of oil, marching ant legs, and feathers.

Her hand shifted.

One, two, _six_ copies of her hand, all just slightly displaced, just slightly different positions, and afterimages with effects that reminded her of nothing so much as a computer glitch.

She let go of the sensation, pushed it away and buried it deep. Was she shivering? She was shivering.

(The fact that it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable when she controlled it didn’t make it easy to work with.)

(It didn’t change the creeping sensation of deathless creatures watching over her shoulder as she tried to bend the world to their whims.)

(Damn Lucrezia. Damn her for leaving so many loops and paradoxes in the world that the Dreen stole Alice to fix them.)

(Damn the Dreen for not doing the dirty work themselves.)

“Hyu iz de real thing, alright,” Andris said, still looking at her hand. His eyes came up to reach hers, and he quirked a smile. “Hy vant to tell _all_ de Jägerkin dot dere’s a Geeft vot likes de next Heterodyne.”

Alice squirmed in her seat. “I… there’s a _reason_ I don’t want people knowing. And if everyone knows, they’ll be tempted to go find the Heterodyne.”

“Und dot’s a bad theeng for hyu,” Andris said.

“For _everyone_ ,” Alice insisted. “If the future doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to, a _lot_ of things are going to break down, and… and…”

She could say it, she could, just to make sure that— “And Mechanicsburg and your Heterodyne would be among the earliest to fade.”

“Fade?”

Alice shook her head. “I can’t say more. I’m sorry, I really can’t, and I wish I could say more to help you, but _so much_ about the world hinges on parts of the next few years. I need to make sure it doesn’t break more than it’s supposed to, and save as many people as I can along the way.”

“Vot if… ve could promise dot nobody vould say a vord or try to find de Heterodyne early?” Andris asked.

“You want them to have hope,” Alice surmised.

“Eet vouldn’t be fair to dem to still theenk ve’s never goink to find vun,” Andris said. He smiled at her, full of sharp teeth, but there was a sadness there. “Ve heff known for a decade und a heff dat dere vas a good chance dot ve’d never heff another. And know ve’d know.”

Alice dropped her eyes to the table again.

She didn’t want this.

She didn’t want to be making decisions for thousands of people.

They wanted to hope.

She wanted to give them that hope but there was so much to consider, so much to keep a reign on so there’d be less damage when she inevitably lost control, and she couldn’t _really_ control what the Jägerkin did, not if she was honest, just beg them not to make the job harder for her than it already was.

Damn Lucrezia, Damn the Dreen. Damn everyone else involved in this mess.

“Fine,” Alice said. “Just… don’t let the information leave the Jägerkin, and don’t let anyone actually _act_ on it, and please don’t harass the circus in an attempt to get me to share more information.”

“Hyu iz verra worried about dot, den?” Andris asked.

Dinreel elbowed him in the side, gaining a hiss in response. She smiled at Alice. “Ve ken do dot. Hy’ll tell de other vild Jägerkin. Andris can tell de generals, and dey’ll take care of de rest.”

“Wait, you’re a wild Jäger?” Alice asked, looking from Dinreel to Andris. “Or…”

“Hy am, but Andris izn’t,” Dinreel said. “Hy like to come see some of mine brudders vunce in a vhile. See vot’s happenink up in de skies.”

“Plus, Dinreel’s searching partner puts down roots und hibernates in de vinters,” Andris tossed in.

“Eh, Filly is goot at vot she does,” Dinreel said, shrugging. “Ve’ll be on de move again in Spring. Iz not a beeg deal, especially if ve iz goink to get a Heterodyne _ennyvay_.”

“Yeah,” Alice said, looking at the table again. Her mug was feeling a little cold. “I guess that’s true.”

“Ve’ll be careful, Mizz Alice,” Andris said. He pushed away from the table, dropped a few coins, and tipped his hat in Alice’s direction. “Hy hope to see hyu again in de future. Mebbe de boys and hy vill come to de show hyu gots tomorrow! Hyu dancink den?”

Alice nodded. “Um. Yeah. Around three o’clock.”

“Den ve’ll be dere!” Andris told her cheerfully. “Luff a good show.”

He tipped his hat again and headed for the door.

Silence reigned for several minutes, the air suffused with the sounds of the shop but not of any conversation between a Gift and a Jäger.

“Hyu iz verra scared,” Dinreel noted.

“I don’t like the idea of being statued,” Alice said flatly.

“Ve iz verra good at keeping secrets,” Dinreel reminded her. “And if hyu say it’s goink to help our Heterodyne, then ve vill do vot hyu say for now.”

It wasn’t going to help Agatha. It really wasn’t. Alice had to keep the timeline intact, had to make sure the loops were closed, had to make sure Agatha got Lucrezia downloaded into her mind and all the other nonsense.

Agatha was going to hurt so much.

Alice could stop that.

Except no, she really, really couldn’t.

She took another sip.

“Ho, but it feelz vrong, mine knowing hyu secret und hyu dun know mine,” Dinreel said, jerking Alice’s attention back to her. “Und alzo. Iz hyu tinkin’g ov goink to Mechanicsburg?”

“Well… yes, eventually,” Alice admitted. She took a sip of her drink, stalling, thinking. “It’s on the circus’s route, and I’m better off if I go take a look around while it’s calm, you know?”

“Hrm. Hokay. Vun of dese iz mine own secret. Und vun iz tied to hyus, zo hyu gets to know eet. First,” Dinreel leaned in close and dropped her voice down so only Alice could hear, all trace of accent gone, “I am a minor art Spark and broke through because of the pain of changing into Jägerkin.”

The accent slipped back on like a soft old shirt as Dinreel continued into Alice’s shocked silence, “Und hyu should… Hrrrm. De first of hyu Gifts, hyu know de people who see fardder like hyu ken. She iz honored deep under Mechanicsburg. Hyu should go see her und say hi!” Dinreel thought about it and then added, “But dun take eeny ov de hats dere. Dot iz de shrine for uz Jägerkin vho haff died.”

Alice frowned in thought and asked, “I thought Jagers get buried with their hats?”

“Vell, yez und no. Ve Jägerkin burn our dead zo no schmott guy ken steal de Family secrets from our corpses. De hats down dere, they iz made by uz Jägers for our fallen brodders and seesters. Eefen de vuns vot dun survive de Brau. Zo dose hats, dey all haff a name vriten on dem, und dey iz not for de living, yah?”

Alice blinked. She breathed in deep, closing her eyes, and sighed it out again. “I think they gave me a glimpse of her, when they sent me. She was… she was statued, protecting the Heterodyne’s sister, I think. She was important, but not recent enough to really… show me much.”

Dinreel tilted her head, a silent request for more information.

“They showed me what they needed to motivate me,” Alice said. “And what I needed for context. That’s all.”

“De statues,” Dinreel said.

“Mostly,” Alice said. She hesitated, but… “They said… the little one. Maxie. The kid that got statued because she made a mistake. They said they’d bring her _back_ if I did my job well enough. They’d release her from statuehood and give her to me to care for. I’m not old enough for a kid but that would be a few years away and… god, nobody deserves that, least of all a _child_.”

“De statues iz aware?” Dinreel asked. “Ve thought zo, but de odder Gifts…”

“Most of them,” Alice said. She shivered. “Not Maxie. They don’t understand humans but they understood _enough_. She’s just frozen. She doesn’t… experience the passage of time, not the way the others do.”

Dinreel’s expression went dark. “So de statue under Mechanicsburg…”

Alice nodded.

“But not leedle Maxie,” Dinreel said. “Ve voz… goink to introduce her to a Geeft. Ve knew vun vot vas still alive. Maxie vas verra lost and afraid, but ve thought…”

Alice shuddered. “I don’t like thinking about it. But it’s an extra reason to make sure things go right, on top of all the other stuff.”

Dinreel smiled at her and reached across the table to pat her hand. “Hy’m sure hyu is goink to do vell. Hyu iz already being verra careful about theengs. Mebbe hyu need somevun to talk mit, sometimes?”

“I have someone, kind of,” Alice said, tucking a loose lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s fine.”

They were silent again, for a bit, and then Dinreel tentatively said, “So, hyu needs to get back to de circus?”

“Soon,” Alice agreed. “I’m not sure I remember the way back, though.”

The invitation was clear, and Dinreel’s eyes lit up, eyebrows jumping towards her hat. “Oh? Vould de lady like an ezcort?”

Alice smiled, hiding it behind her mug. “She would indeed.”

Payments made, they headed for the street, and then for the park the circus was in.

“Zo, vat vould hyu like me to call hyu?” Dinreel asked. “Hy’ll probably be seeink you more; I’m a vild Jäger vot’s got a lot of time to visit places vot mine brudders don’t. Alice? Mizz Alice? Mizz Nixy?”

Alice made a quiet noise.

“Hm?” Dinreel bumped her shoulder against Alice’s, careful and soft. “Vot’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Alice squeaked. “You just. Um. ‘Miss Nixy’ sounds really cute in the accent, so, uh, I really like that one. Just. Um. Yeah.”

Dinreel’s smile curled up slowly. “Hokay, den, Mizz Nixy. Hyu gots dat. I’ll tell all de boyz, too.”

“Joy,” Alice managed to say. Were her cheeks going red? She didn’t blush easily, but she wouldn’t be surprised now. “Um. About the liking women thing? The rest of the circus doesn’t know, so… I don’t know if you were planning on something cutesy for a goodbye, since I get the feeling that you’re trying _very_ hard to fluster me, and Andris _did_ call you over mostly because I told him I wasn’t into men, so… uh…”

“Ho yez, Hy can keep it verra suttle,” Dinreel assured her. The Jäger woman patted Alice’s shoulder and grinned wide, with all the sharp and pointy teeth that came with the role.

They made it back to the circus quickly enough, and while there were certainly some _odd_ looks from the other members of the company, nobody actually approached them.

As promised, Dinreel kept the goodbye simple and didn’t make any jokes about why Andris had gotten them to meet in the first place.

“So, you made a friend.”

Alice jumped with a startled squeak and spun around. “Gospodin Rassmussin! Um. Yeah. I did.”

The man’s eyes looked past Alice, at Dinreel’s retreating form, and he snorted. “If you say so. Careful with the Jägerkin, girl.”

“Yes, sir,” Alice muttered. She opened her mouth, closed it, and nervously tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Um, was there anything else you needed, or…?”

“Big day tomorrow,” he said. He gestured further into camp with the cane. “Organza wanted you in for one more fitting on the blue dress. Better get to it.”

Alice nodded and walked past him as quickly as she could.

There was an odd twinge in her chest as she passed the props wagon, something deep and strange and unfamiliar.

She’d look into that… later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of the Dinreel conversation towards the end was written by ScribeProtra. There's some fun stuff going on soon-ish.


	9. The First Shift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice gets a visit.

“So,” Olga said, slinging an arm around Alice’s shoulders. She didn’t get any further, because Alice jumped and screamed.

There was a silence of several seconds. Alice breathed rapidly, eyes wide, and stared at Olga. Her expression faded towards distinct embarrassment. “Um. Hi, Olga. You surprised me.”

“Must have been deep in thought, huh?” Olga asked, plopping down next to her on the bench. “I hear you got walked home by a Jäger yesterday.”

“I… yeah,” Alice said. “I admitted that I was kind of scared of getting lost, and she offered.”

“She?” Olga asked.

“They did not mention that?”

Olga shook her head. “Okay, then. Do I _want_ to know why you were hanging out with a Jäger in the first place?”

Olga wasn’t entirely sure how to read into the sheer discomfort and ill-hidden fear on Alice’s face, but it was definitely something to think about. Alice finally looked down and said, “It’s complicated.”

“What kind of complicated?” Olga asked.

“They…” Alice hesitated, getting that confused and frustrated look that she wore when she was looking for the right translations. “They are… they have good noses? Yes, that, and… um…”

“English?” Olga offered. Good noses was pretty clear in meaning, but ther was also obviously a lot more going on.

Alice’s nose wrinkled. _“They’ve got a good sense of smell. I smell… different, because of things that happened with the job I got before the Circus. I panicked a little because I hadn’t expected anyone to figure out what I was before, and I needed to talk to them about it.”_

Olga leaned forwards, resting her elbows on her knees. “The job changed you that much?”

It took Alice a few seconds to process that, and then she nodded. “Yes.”

“And the Jägerkin can tell.”

Alice nodded again.

Olga patted her on the shoulder. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Alice shook her head. “The Jägerkin is… are? Are already enough. I can not tell more.”

Well, that certainly fit with her attitude about it before. It was annoying, definitely, and Olga wanted to poke a little deeper, but Alice clammed up about whatever the job had been whenever someone asked. This mostly confirmed that there had been _something_ Sparky about her last job, and that she’d probably been a minion that had undergone experimentation she hadn’t wanted to be a part of.

A few people had suggested that she’d maybe worked for one of the Sparks that the Baron had gotten under control, but details were rarely forthcoming.

Olga _really_ wanted those details.

The gossip had been dying down over the past few months, as Alice slid into place and did work just as the rest of them did, learning the language and making friends and so on, and Olga had _been_ a friend, had _been_ the one that was willing to the let the speculation on the confusing foreign nature go… but she still wanted to know, and so did everybody else. There was just too much that didn’t add up, and the fact that Jägerkin were involved just made everything odder.

“I think they will come to the show,” Alice said, snapping Olga out of her thoughts.

“Wait, the Jägers?” Olga asked. “They’re coming to watch?”

Alice nodded slowly. “They did seem, uh… interested? Interested in the circus.”

“Jägers at a Heterodyne show,” Olga said, trying to figure out how that would end up looking. “You’re sure?”

Alice nodded. Then she tilted sideways until she could rest her head on Olga’s shoulder and whined. “I’m so tired.”

“Are you now.”

 _“Stress causes anxiety and anxiety makes me unable to sleep and that means I’m super tired right now,”_ Alice rattled off.

Olga patted her on the shoulder. “We could… go talk to Moxana.”

“Hm?”

“That would make you feel better, right?”

Alice pulled away and squinted at her. _“You’re making fun of me.”_

Olga smiled. “Just a little.”

Alice sighed and rolled to her feet. “We go to the Muse.”

“We do indeed!”

o.o.o.o.o

Just as the actors had a myriad of costumes for their roles, Alice had a rotation of her own by now. They were pretty, perfectly fitted, and pointedly drew the eye towards whichever movement she wanted to show off in a given dance.

(Alice did not, in fact, make the choices in her dances, so it was really more whichever movement _Rassmussin_ wanted her to show off.)

(He made good choices, though.)

She could do splits now! She’d _never_ been able to touch her toes, let alone do full splits! She got to do them on stage in front of people who _liked_ it, and pretty dresses and comfy shoes, and she even got to give requests for stuff like dress designs. This meant that, while tonight’s was firmly in the realm of the usual overskirts and flaring fabric, the entire thing looked like it had taken some inspiration from Frozen. If Alice had been humming “Let it Go” to herself while doing turns and practicing kicks, nobody here knew where the song came from enough to judge her for it.

The show went splendidly. Pix still wasn’t part of the company, and without her or Agatha, Olga was actually the one that ended up playing Lucrezia most nights. Olga was a _very_ good actress, too, at least to Alice’s largely untrained eyes.

It was an experience to watch, from her perch on Herr Helios’s platform. Everyone had insisted that she needed to get a little more used to heights.

The fact that she wouldn’t die on impact certainly helped with the entirely natural fear of trying to do aerial acts without a safety net below, but the sheer discomfort of a safety stabilization was enough to have her nervous anyway.

“There’s Jägerkin in the audience,” Benjamin commented. The man was Herr Helios’s current apprentice. He was maybe late twenties, had close-cut bleached-blonde hair that contrasted nicely with the dark hue of his skin, and was very well-muscled. It all came together in a way that Alice decided was very aesthetically pleasing, and probably quite attractive to anyone who swung that way. The number of cheering women at his acts certainly suggested this was true.

“Some decided that they like me, yesterday,” Alice said. She bit her lip, trying to figure out what to say. It wasn’t even that she couldn’t figure out a translation, so much as she couldn’t figure out what to say at all.

“Hmph,” he grunted, frowning down at the audience. “Why?”

“I’m cute,” Alice said flatly, and then shrugged when he looked at her, utterly unimpressed. “There _is_ a reason, but I… I cannot tell you much about it. Olga knows. The Countess knows, and that means that Master Payne knows. I said… told? Told Lars, because he was at the bar when I left.”

“I won’t press,” he said, before she could try to add some more. “They’re good?”

Alice shrugged. “They are Jägerkin. They listen to the Baron, and there was a… um…”

He waited.

“One Jäger woman that does not work for the Baron?” Alice tried.

“A wild Jäger.”

“Yes, one of those, and she is nice,” Alice said. She shrugged again. “They are not bad now.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Benjamin muttered.

The play passed well, getting plenty of cheers, though Alice only understood scattered words of the dialogue. Her preexisting auditory processing, the distance from the stage, and her weak grasp of Romanian all combined to make the show impossible to really follow, but it was still fun.

She slid down to the ground as the show closed out for the night, hands and legs wrapped around the silks just tightly enough to keep the descent under control. Once at the ground, she found the rigging for the blimp and started loosening it in time for Benjamin himself to make it to the ground and speed his way through the rest. Together, they pulled the blimp down to an altitude more on level with the grounded cabins.

“Hoy, Mizz Nixy!”

Benjamin looked past Alice, then at her face, which was frozen in place. He raised an eyebrow, and then snorted. “So that’s how it is, then. Go talk to the cute Jäger girl. I can finish up well enough on my own here.”

“…that is how _what_ is?” Alice asked.

He gave her a Look. “I don’t particularly talk about it much, but I do… prefer men, sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. Should I read into your reaction that…?”

Alice’s eyes widened. A tiny voice in her brain whispered about broken gaydar and fellow queers. “Oh. Er… yes. Please do not tell anyone.”

He paused, gave her a smile, and patted her shoulder. “Your secret’s safe with me. Have fun.”

Alice nodded sharply and, on impulse, gave him a hug. She turned around and darted off before she could take a look at his expression and second-guess herself.

 _Should’ve asked_.

Dinreel met her with a grin, and Andris was just behind her, hands tucked into his pockets and slouching in a way that looked well-practiced and laidback.

“Hyu look verra nice,” Dinreel said, starting the conversation off with some relieving English, and Alice stuck her tongue out at the woman.

It was not a particularly well-planned move, but Dinreel laughed instead of rolling her eyes or otherwise reacting like it was something unbearably childlike, so Alice considered a win. She felt an echo of her mother knocking at the inside of her head, and followed it up with, “Thank you.”

“Ve vaz hoping dot hyu vould talk vit some of de other Jägerkin,” Andris said, drawing attention to himself. “Dere’s vun vot’s going to be telling the generals vot hyu sed. Iz dot hokay?”

“I, uh…” Alice looked over her shoulder at the circus, and then turned back to the Jägers and winced. “I don’t have much time. I can mingle with the audience a little, it encourages them to spend more, but I’m expected to help take down the night’s set and switch out of my costume within a certain amount of time.”

“Ve’ll make it verra qvick,” Andris promised. “Iz not much information, and ve gots most of eet yestaday. Hyu chust needs to be dere to, ah… confirm.”

Alice blinked slowly at him. “Okay, then. Who am I talking to?”

“Hyu eez talkink to _me_.”

The voice came from the left, but in all the hubbub of the post-show rush, it wasn’t much of a shock. Alice turned to look, and… oh.

Grey skin tinged faintly green, yellow eyes, and a familiar purple getup.

“Hello, Jenka.”

The Jäger woman’s eyes snapped to her siblings’, and then back to Alice. “Dey didn’t tell hyu who I am, did dey?”

Alice shook her head. “No.”

“Hyu already knew.”

“I did.”

Jenka nodded slowly. She looked around at the crowd, and then pulled Alice to a quiet corner behind some wagons. Andris and Dinreel followed. “Hy’m going to heff a pawt in de story hyuk know, den.”

“Most of the Jägerkin are,” Alice hedged. “You are one of the ones that also has a name put to the page.”

“Means a beeg pawt,” Jenka said.

“Or simply a memorable one,” Alice said. “There aren’t a lot of female Jägers. We… the readers tended to latch on to the few that we saw.”

“Ho, like me?” Dinreel asked.

Alice looked at her, opened her mouth as though to say something, and then just shook her head. She turned back to Jenka. “I can’t give you any more details than that. I’m sorry.”

“Hyu ken’t or von’t?” Jenka asked.

“Both,” Alice said. “The more I keep hidden now, the more wiggle room I have later. Better to keep tiny secrets about things that don’t matter _while_ they don’t matter, than to set off butterflies that’ll cause ramifications I can’t predict.”

Jenka nodded sharply. “Dot’s fair. Hyu sed dere vill be a new Heterodyne?”

“In time.”

“Ken hyu tell us vhere?” Jenka asked.

“No.”

Jenka tilted her head and waited.

Alice took a deep breath, closing her eyes. “The Heterodyne’s current location is a secret for a reason. I like… the Heterodyne, and I want to see them succeed and be happy, but I can’t share that information yet.”

“De Heterodyne is safest in Mechanicsburg,” Jenka pointed out.

“With a half-dead, completely crazed Castle?” Alice asked. “I know what you’re trying to do. I think there’s a good chance things could work out well if I told you, but I _genuinely can’t_.”

“Becawse hyu’d get de statue treatment,” Andris surmised.

“And that would remove my ability to…” Alice trailed off, eyeing the skies, and held up a hand to stop the Jägers when they tried to get her to continue. Pages, more of them, just two, and… not important. Funny, but not important right now. “I can’t tell you where the Heterodyne is. There is an unfortunate amount of— _ah!”_

She clutched at her head and tried to bite back her scream, bending over at the waist as her upper body started fuzzing and shifting and destabilizing down to the atom. It was over as quickly as it came, and she breathed heavily as she came back to normal. She couldn’t hold back the whimpers of pain as the phantom shocks lingered.

Fine then.

Just. Fine.

“Dot voz definitely evidence,” Jenka muttered. She put a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “Hy’ll take hyu vord dot ve ken’t find de Heterodyne now. De Jägerkin chust continue as we heff, and ve’ll find de Heterodyne. Hy’ll tell de generals, den. Hyu… Hyu should mebbe sit down.”

Alice nodded and let herself be led over to the steps of the wagon. Her hands came down to clutch miserably at her midsection. The pain really covered most of her body, and while the destabilization generally targeted her head as that was where the mouth was, the rest of her body felt the ramifications, too.

“Hyu need some vater?” Andris asked.

Alice nodded, feeling rather a lot like she was about to puke.

_“Hey, what’s going on over here?!”_

Oh god, Abner, not _now_. Romanian, too, so it wasn’t like she’d be having an easy time following.

“Please don’t yell,” Alice muttered lowly, but Jenka apparently caught the sound.

“Someteeng vent verra wrong,” she said. “Hyu friend hed a bad time. Ve iz helpeenk.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Abner told her, voice colder than Alice had heard it. Well, Jägerkin were apparently threatening a member of his company, and they _were_ safely ensconced in a town. “Alice?”

“They didn’t do anything wrong,” Alice said. English still. Not Romanian, not when she was still… not when… “Remember when I fainted outside of the Props Wagon? It’s like that.”

“I thought you said that wouldn’t be happening anymore,” Abner said. Oh, he was sticking to English too. Nice of him.

“The fainting isn’t,” Alice said.

“Hy gots vater!” Andris called, trotting up with a bottle. “Ah. Hyu iz… de guy vot’s in charge?”

“Not quite,” Abner said. “But close enough. What happened?”

“Abner, it’s _fine_ ,” Alice insisted. “Please, just let it go. It’s my own fault for not being careful.”

Abner pursed his lips and nodded shortly. He held out a hand to Andris, indicating the glass bottle. “I’ll take things from here.”

“Ah… seesters, Hy teenk it’s time for us to go,” Andris said, passing the bottle to Abner.

“Hy’m fine vit dot,” Jenka said. She slipped out from where she’d sat herself next to Alice (when had she gotten there?) and disappeared. Abner took her place, and there was a different kind of comfort in the presence of someone that was familiar after months of living and working in the same travelling show.

“Dinreel?” Andris said.

The woman sighed. She stepped away from the wagon and tipped her hat at the two circus members. “Hy’ll be seeing hyu, Mizz Nixy!”

Alice smiled weakly and waved at her as the two Jägerkin left.

Abner waited until they were gone, and then quietly said, “We heard screaming.”

“And worried that I was being menaced by the scary Jägers?” Alice asked. She laughed humorlessly and took a sip of water. “No, it was just… my body acted up. It’s fine.”

“If you’re screaming in pain—”

“It’s _fine_ , dude!”

There was silence for a few seconds, and then Alice heaved out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted. I just really am _not_ comfortable talking about this.”

“Will you ever be?” Abner asked.

Alice shrugged. “Maybe someday.”

“I guess that’s the best any of us can ask for.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Ma da vas…” Alice muttered, trying not to let the box slip from her hands. It wasn’t _quite_ a swear, but it was a phrase that generally ended in one, even if she wasn’t saying it. Twenty-three years old and she was still uncomfortable with swearing. She was going to be even more uncomfortable with the Serbian ones than she already was, once they crossed the border, assuming they were similar enough to even matter…

Her fingers ached. Right. Heavy wooden box that she couldn’t lift. Slipping from her fingers, partly because gloves. Ow.

“Here, let me get that!”

The box was suddenly gone, her fingers blessedly free. Alice let out a little “ooph!” of surprise, and then managed to catch sight of Lars.

She struggled for words for a moment, and then settled on, “My hero.”

Lars laughed. “Well, there’s a reason I play Bill.”

(Pity the sentence wasn’t in English. Could have had a nice pun there, with playbills and… and she really needed more hobbies that had nothing to do with her job.)

“So, why did you come to help?” Alice asked.

“Gospodin Rassmussin actually sent me,” Lars admitted with an easy grin. “Said he wanted to get you trained up on some partner and group dances before we hit the border.”

“He did not do that for any of the Bulgarian… ah, areas?”

“Territories, maybe?” Lars offered. “But you said your family is from Belgrade, right?”

“I was born there.”

“Right, so—wait, really?” Lars looked at her in surprise. “I thought you said you were…”

“I left when I was under two,” Alice said. “I do not remember it well.”

“Well, alright then, that makes sense,” Lars agreed. “But if you’re one of the star dancers, and born local, it’s going to go over better if you can do some of the dances.”

Alice grimaced. “I understand.”

“You don’t look happy.”

“I like kolo. I’m not _good_ at it.”

Lars shrugged. “That’s what we have Gospodin Rassmussin for. He’s got me helping out with the partner stuff, too.”

Alice nodded. “You are good at them?”

“I like to think so.”

“Then that is good.”

They got the box put away, and as soon as they got to Gospodin Rassmussin and the practice area that had been set up, Alice shed her outermost coat.

“You said you know how to do the kolo?”

“I do, but poorly,” Alice said.

“That’s what you say about everything,” Rassmussin told her.

“It’s usually true.”

Rassmussin rolled his eyes. “We’ll start with that, then. Move on to a few more of the group dances, then partner.”

He frowned. “You look upset.”

“This is my normal face.”

“I can read you, child. You’re upset. _What_ is _wrong?_ ”

 _“…I’ve done poorly at learning ballroom and partner stuff before,”_ Alice admitted. _“They mess with my sense of symmetry and I know it’s kinda stupid but I get super uncomfortable when a certain action is repeated on one side of my body but not the other for ages.”_

Rassmussin closed his eyes and breathed in deep. “Can you ignore it?”

“I can try.”

He rubbed at his temples. “Let’s begin, then.”

As it turned out, Lars was a _great_ dance partner, one who didn’t mind that she frowned in concentration and stepped on his toes, and didn’t let his hands drift to ungentlemanly places.

 _I’m supposed to be a professional dancer,_ Alice thought to herself. _But this is just another point in the column of me being more of a joke than anything._

“Stop that,” Lars said.

“Stop what?”

“You’re overthinking it,” he said. “And maybe fighting yourself over how good you are, like Olga said. Just relax.”

That advice was probably well meant, but…

 _“I am physically incapable of relaxing and I cannot move on instinct with the rhythm until I’ve repeated the steps so many times that thought is no longer required_ ,” Alice told him.

Lars blinked at her, mouth just slightly open and brow pinched, and he turned to Rassmussin for a translation.

“She can’t relax until after she knows the dance without trying,” the man said, his voice flatter than Alice had even attempted, let alone managed. “So it looks like you’ll be running these again until she can do that.”

 _“As per usual_ ,” Alice muttered under her breath.

“Again!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The symmetry thing is real and I hate it. I tried to learn how to waltz and my legs were just screaming at me. It's annoying as hell.


	10. The Home Country

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice has a lot of feelings. Some of them are even good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did try to do some hovertext for the part that isn't in English, but in case that didn't work, there's a translation at the bottom.

A cold swept through the circus.

It was during travel time, at least. It made the whole thing a pain, but at least they weren’t trying to perform through sniffles and aches. The Countess whipped up medicine, and everyone bundled up, and they worked their way up the snowy paths towards Niš. There were two villages on the way that they might have otherwise stopped at, but skipped in favor of trudging on towards the larger city. They’d make up for it later, maybe with a longer stay in Beograd or Novi Sad.

“How are you not sick?” Olga asked, blowing her nose for the eighth time inside the hour. She looked about as miserable as everyone felt, and Alice didn’t envy her.

Alice bit her lip, looking down at her lap and the reins she was holding in twice-mittened hands. She met Olga’s eyes and tried to hold firm. “I do not know if I can.”

Olga frowned at her. “If you can what?”

“Become sick.”

Olga opened her mouth as though to say something, and then closed it and shook her head. “Okay. Sure.”

“Sorry.”

Olga elbowed her. “Stop apologizing.”

Alice couldn’t help the smile that came up. “Okay. You should go inside. It’s very cold. You are sick.”

“Don’t feel like it,” Olga said, tucking her hands back up under her armpits. “I’d be bored.”

“You need sleep.”

“Nah.”

Alice didn’t roll her eyes, but she did sigh. Just a little.

Olga leaned into her, shoulders touching and wild mass of hair threatening to get in Alice’s mouth. “What did you want to do?”

“Hm?”

“You need to practice your Romanian. Let’s talk.”

Alice made a face. “Okay…?”

“What did you want to do, before you joined the circus?” Olga asked. Clarified, maybe. “For a job?”

There were answers to that. Rote ones, practiced ones, ones where she’d teased out the things she wanted from the skills she had and decided what fit. She didn’t have those answers in this world, and she definitely didn’t have them in this language.

“Books,” she finally said. “I most wanted to write, but that was, um, not likely to work. If I could not make stories, I wanted to… help other stories work?”

Olga made a noise of understanding.

“I don’t know how to say,” Alice muttered.

“Tell me what it would be in English and I’ll help you figure it out,” Olga suggested.

 _“Marketing for the publishing industry with a heavy focus on either long-form comics or children’s and young adult literature_ ,” Alice rattled off.

Olga was silent for a few moments, and then said, “Okay. We’ll start from the top and work our way through, because _I_ didn’t understand half of _that_.”

“Or you could sleep.”

“No, we’re doing this now.”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice was one of only a handful of healthy people in the entire camp. They made it to Niš on the tail end of the sickness, and while they weren’t _technically_ quarantined, they were discouraged from leaving the camp unless they were obviously healthy.

Yeti was one of the other healthy folks. Alice wondered if he was the kind of sparky construct that had gotten a reinforced immune system like the Jägerkin. The fact that he’d remained hale and hearty through the last week and change certainly suggested it. He might have just had a more varied exposure to pathogens. Whatever the case, he was one of the few people in camp that was completely okay. The fur even ensured that he was having less difficulty with the temperature.

As a result, he and Alice were the ones sent to the pijaca in the mornings to get food for their first few days in Niš.

Alice hung back at first. She didn’t trust herself to know what the best prices or food were, and didn’t want to accidentally bring back something that wasn’t ripe enough to use yet, or pay twice what was reasonable because she’d misunderstood the city’s power purchasing parity.

But she listened.

And she understood far, far more than she expected to.

“You try the next one,” Yeti suggested, as they headed to the open-front bakery.

Alice stuffed her hands into her pockets, looked ahead, and said, “Okay.”

Yeti gave her a rundown on acceptable pricing on their way, and then stood behind her once they got to the line.

Alice wished she could see Yeti’s face when she ordered. Maybe he’d expected it. Maybe he hadn’t. It would have been nice to know.

“Osam ove iz sredine, i… ajde jedno dvadeset te male?”

She waited.

“Vi iz onog cirkusa na jugu?”

“Da.”

“Kad će biti predstava?”

“Nismo skroz sigurni, ali mislim sutra. Danas uglavnom samo organizujemo stvari.”

“Ćerka mi čeka već mesecima da nova grupa prođe.”

“E, nadam se onda da će mo mi da joj se sviđamo. Izvini, je li mogu da dodam jednu te u oblik ruže?”

“Naravno. Kako plaća te, dinari ili…?”

“Pax Guilder.”

“Onda za sve ovo… šesdeset sedam.”

Alice turned to Yeti. “Is sixty-seven a good price for all this?”

Yeti looked like he was holding back a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll… that’ll do.”

He made her do the talking for the rest of the shopping trip.

She didn’t mind.

o.o.o.o.o

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, of course. There were plenty of words she didn’t know, and a lot that just plain didn’t exist yet, and a heavy accent on her part to boot.

But she could talk, and didn’t need to second-guess and stumble and go as slowly as possible, and that was what mattered.

o.o.o.o.o

_The earliest known Dreen Gift was presented to the world on an unknown date during the founding of Mechanicsburg. Ht’Rok-Din’s success is often partially attributed to the woman’s presence, and many have suggested that the survival of his children was largely a result of her aid. Scholars believe she may have even married into the family, but complete records are sparse and the claim is contested._

_Contemporary readings of her name and its pronunciation differ, but the most common transliteration is_ Denkatt _, with a peculiar doubled consonant, uncommon for names in early Mechanicsburg. The name has no known meaning in the original Mechanicsburg language, and is likely a name she brought from her first life, in a language that does not, and may never, exist in a form that would give the name meaning._

_Denkatt is preserved as a Statued Gift deep within Mechanicsburg’s underbelly. The area is off-limits to tourists, and visiting dignitaries, scholars, and religious officials must acquire special passes in order to enter the cave in question. It is considered a sacred place and treated as a shrine by Mechanicsburgers, with a traditional honor guard of Jägerkin. Upon the Jäger army’s entry into the Baron’s service, the honor guard was replaced with a human one._

_The Freezing of Denkatt has been the subject of numerous classical paintings, especially during the Italian Renaissance. **[1]** One of the final battles of the wars to establish Mechanicsburg nearly ended with the death of Ht’Rok-Din’s daughter and, according to oral tradition, Denkatt saved her life and was frozen for doing so. **[2]** The statue was moved from the ruins of the original Castle several decades later to a new location, where the shrine was established._

_Denkatt is viewed by Mechanicsburgers as a symbol of those who pledge their lives to the Heterodynes, and all they sacrifice for their Lords, Ladies, and town. For this reason, the statue is surrounded by tokens, including a large number of hats. **[3]** Among other things, the statue is used as a location to mourn the casualties of war, those who took the Jägerbräu and did not survive, and several notable holidays._

o.o.o.o.o

“Rakija?”

Alice looked up from the children’s book Benjamin had loaned her, and straight into Lars’s grinning face.

Also the bottle in his hand.

Huh.

“Just a bit,” Alice said. Lars passed her the bottle and sat down next to her, fingers tapping against his knee as he stared into the fire.

Alice reminded herself that the ethanol content here was going to kill all the germs anyway, so it didn’t _matter_ if she didn’t have her own cup or if someone else’s lips had touched it, and—

“I brought you a glass,” Lars said, holding it out with a wry grin.

Oh.

That was.

Oh.

“Thanks,” Alice said quietly, pouring herself as much as she though she’d be able to get away with, which wasn’t really much in the first place, and passed the bottle back. “Why are you here?”

Lars’s eyebrow popped up, but he didn’t comment on the phrasing. It wasn’t like Alice had the vocabulary to be completely polite, and everyone knew it was a work in progress.

“Can’t just say hello to a friend?” Lars asked.

Alice made a face as she drank some of the rakija. It was never going to be a taste that she could drink flatly, but at least she could try. It also made it easier to hide the face she wanted to make at ambiguously ominous answers.

(Would this have been ominous to someone else or was her brain just messing with her again?)

“How long have you been in this part of Europa? The empire, I mean?” Lars asked.

“A few days before the circus found me,” Alice said. She didn’t meet his eyes. She took another sip of her rakija.

“…you just ended up this close to the center of the Baron’s lands that quickly?” Lars asked, sounding a little lost.’

“I do not want to talk about it,” Alice said quietly.

“Fair enough,” Lars said. “Olga said you used to be a university student. Marketing, apparently?”

“International Business, but… yes. A lot of it was marketing. I liked that most,” Alice took another sip. It spread across her tongue with a deceptively light numbness.

“Did you try to use that for the circus?” Lars prodded again. “If you studied marketing, then you can probably draw, right?”

“Um… no. Not well,” Alice said. “It was… it is hard to explain. There were… tools? Tools back home that do not exist here. Many, er, much of what I wanted to do was with those tools.”

He didn’t speak English at all, so she couldn’t work through it from both sides like she could with Olga or Gospodin Rassmussin, and even if they’d been able to figure it out, it wasn’t like this world _had_ social media, or Google Ads, or Excel programs, or any number of other things that Alice had studied how to leverage for contemporary marketing of intellectual property.

“That’s… weird,” Lars decided. “Fits, though. With all of… you.”

He gestured vaguely at her, a waving arm that nonetheless got across what he meant.

Alice couldn’t help it. “I’m weird, then?”

“No!” Lars protested. “No, it just fits with the other things you’ve said. About your home. How it’s different from here.”

Alice smiled. “I know.”

“You do?”

“I do.”

Lars peered at her, suspicious, and then… “You’re messing with me.”

“A little.”

“You knew what I meant.”

“I did need to check.”

“Of course.”

Alice smiled a little as she took her next sip.

“You’re not cold?” Lars asked, shifting a little closer.

Alice shrugged. “Surprising. Madame Fifield is very good.”

“She is,” Lars agreed. “She designed all those shirts that can get teared off in the shows more than once.”

Alice made a small noise. Was that…? Probably not. But even if he was, best to ignore it. “Are they… hm. Velcro?”

“What’s Velcro?”

Alice bit her lip. “Mm. Fabric, with… pieces like this?” She made a hook shape with her finger. “You have two, and then you put them with the other, and they do _this_ and stay. You take them apart and they go back to the last… um. Shape? Shape. Then you can use them many times.”

Lars stared at her hands for a long moment, and then at Alice. “This was common for you?”

“Very,” Alice said, nodding sharply. “Easy clothes for children, and old people, and those with, um… bad bodies?”

Lars nodded slowly.

“I think they were… I mean, I think someone saw a plant that did that, and did the same thing,” Alice tried to explain. “But with, um… you do not have _plastic_.”

Lars shook his head. “We don’t. What is it?”

Alice blanked for a long moment. She remembered some of the scientific words, but only in English, and was pretty sure they weren’t enough to recreate the substance in question anyway.

Belatedly, she looked down at her shoes. They were getting pretty worn down, to the point where she’d have to toss them and switch to just circus-made shoes by the end of spring, but they were still good enough to wear, and she wasn’t going to throw out a pair of serviceable shoes for no reason.

Which meant she still had these.

“The _aglets_ ,” she said, reaching down and grabbing a shoelace, tapping the little plastic ending. “This is made of _plastic_.”

He leaned down and took it, rolling it between his fingers with a frown.

“It can, um…” Alice trailed off and, when Lars looked up at her, made a bending motion with her hands.

“Huh,” Lars said. He pinched the plastic again, feeling it give, and then sat back up. “Interesting.”

It probably wasn’t, Alice thought, but… oh, he was a lot closer than before.

Hm.

That was.

He gave her a dazzling grin, lit well by the firelight, and… oh dear, he was _very_ good at this considering she’d managed to turn the conversation to _aglets_ of all things, but also. Well. Lesbian.

She grinned back unsurely. “It was very… popular? No. It was, um, everywhere.”

“Common,” Lars suggested.

“Yes, that,” Alice said.

“Is it something you miss having?”

“We used it for many things,” Alice said. “But it was bad for… the world? Plants and animals and the ocean.”

“Which you care about?” Lars prompted.

“There was a lot of it,” Alice said. “It was a problem.”

“So you were very supportive of the environment and protecting it?” Lars asked.

Alice blinked at him, mouthed the words to herself, and managed to grok the meaning. “Yes, very.”

“You seem to care a lot about a lot of things… Rich girl giving to charities?” He guessed. “Giving money to the poor and all that?”

Alice barked out a laugh. “No. I was… not rich. Not poor, but not rich. I gave what I could, but it was not much.”

“Still something that was meant to help people, yes?”

Lars shifted closer. His eyes flicked down to her mouth, and then back up, and he grinned that grin that had probably charmed dozens of girls across the little towns of Europa.

Alice tried to lean away as subtly as she could.

Lars blinked at her and then… backed off. Oh. Okay. “Too fast?”

Alice opened her mouth, unable to say anything for a few long moments.

(Benjamin was out, right? He’d said as much, that he wasn’t hiding it but didn’t shout it from the rooftops either? It was safe. It was totally safe. She could do this and not get kicked out or get dirty looks, or have to change cabins because someone had weird predatory lesbian tropes stuck in their head, and--)

“I like girls,” she blurted out, with a twist of mortified anticipation in her chest. “I don’t... do romance. Not with men. And you are a man, so I don’t. Um.”

She dropped her eyes to the ground and leaned away, wrapping her arms around her knees and doing her best to listen for Lars getting up and leaving, or saying something she didn’t get.

“So… like, uh, Sappho?” He asked at length.

Alice nodded sharply, still not meeting his eyes.

“Okay,” Lars said. “That is… not what I expected. Makes a lot of sense, though.”

“Sorry,” Alice muttered.

“For _what?”_ Lars asked, sounding so confused that Alice actually looked up. “I didn’t read the signals properly, right? I wasn’t even sure if you were just being friendly or actually responding, so this is just… confirmation that you’re not interested. Not the way I _expected_ , but still just… you prefer women. That’s not really insulting me or anything.”

Alice shrugged, looking into the fire again. “I worry. Some people react bad.”

“…okay,” Lars said. “I promise you don’t need to apologize. Friends?”

Alice looked over, held out a hand, and shook his when he slipped it into her grasp. “Friends.”

She went back to looking into the fire, leaning over to push her shoulder against Lars’s. The awkwardness of straight flirtation was gone, and with it, the fear of accidentally giving off unintended signals.

“So that Jäger woman…”

“Maybe. If I see her again.”

“Anyone in camp?”

“No.”

“…you sure?”

“Please do not try to find me a girlfriend.”

“I could be useful!”

“No, thank you, Lars.”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice waited until Rassmussin’s eyes were fixed on Moonsock and her lute, and then reached up to readjust her bra.

She’d been wearing the same one since she got here. Things were bound to fray, especially with how often she had to wash it, and this was far from the first time the underwire had found its way out to poke her in the sternum or arm. Sports bras weren’t really a _thing_ here, thought they’d managed something, and she was probably—

“Miss Nixy!” Professor Moonsock called over. “Is there a problem?”

Alice dropped her hands, cursing a little inside. “No, ma’am!”

Moonsock shared a look with Rassmussin and then stalked over with her hands on her hips. “Look away, old man!”

There was grumbling, but the man did so, and Alice let Moonsock yank her practice shirt up to her collarbone and examine her bra.

“This is falling apart,” Moonsock commented.

“It is good for a few more weeks, at least,” Alice muttered. “I will get something new then.”

Moonsock made a face, dropping the fabric. “I need to get back to the horses, but… Hm. Have you talked to Organza about getting a corset?”

 _“Madame Fifield said I could get away without one in the Wastelands,”_ Alice said. _“Urban areas are… well. I can pass it off as just being in the circus. People usually take that as an excuse for being strange._ ”

“There’s a limit,” Moonsock reminded her. “If you need something new anyway, I’d talk to her.”

“But… a corset would get in the way of the dancing,” Alice protested.

“Not necessarily,” Rassmussin grunted. “Let’s go.”

“But—”

“Come along, child.”

Alice sighed and followed.

Organza Fifield had technically had two wagons that were considered her territory, so to speak. One was the wagon that she actually owned with her husband, her sleeping quarters and home. The other was the costuming wagon. While the circus had several costumers, Organza was the most skilled and experienced by a decade or two. The costuming wagon didn’t have any patterns, but was covered in costume sketches, mannequins, and bundles of fabric. There were also, on occasion, little vials of chemicals, swatches of fabric that shimmered in unnatural ways, and other signs that Sparky science was happening when Alice wasn’t there. They tried to hide it, she was sure, but she already knew what to look for.

“A ribbon corset would be fine for most of it,” Organza noted, flipping through a little notebook. “I have some old designs for a contortionist’s corset, actually, if you want to use one for flexibility training. I may need to put a little more time in if you want to transition into wearing one on stage as well. You can get away without one, if we build you a new brassiere, but I think it might be a good idea. Also, if you’re going to be interacting with people publicly now that we’re passing through some of the larger cities, you may want a more formal corset with breast support and such.”

Alice stared at her. “Um. I… think I understood most of that?”

“There are corsets that will work for you dancing,” Organza told her, pointing to the design in her book. “This one may even help with the stretching. You don’t need one, if you get a new brassiere, but a corset would be a good idea. You might also want a full corset designed for more formal events.”

“Okay,” Alice said, after a few moments. “I… okay, then. I worry about the, um, washing?”

“We’ll walk you through it if you need help,” Organza promised. “Almost every woman in camp has some experience on that front.”

Alice made a face. Yes. God forbid she be capable of something most girls her age would be, even once.

(It wasn’t her fault and she knew it, but it still stung every time she needed to learn something that everyone else already considered basic common knowledge.)

“Sit down,” Organza suggested. “I’ll get you fitted. Do you need help putting it on?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good, that’ll make things go faster, then.”

o.o.o.o.o

They left Niš a few days later.

[1] The Louvre contains no less than three separate paintings of The Freezing of Denkatt, one of which was painted by Van Rijn himself.

[2] As with many other things, Mecahnicsburg has provided many conflicting stories on DenKatt’s life and circumstances. The central truth is always that she sacrificed herself to save a member of the Heterodyne Family and is celebrated for doing so. Beyond that, the details vary.

[3] While the exact reasoning behind the hats remains unexplained, many have noted that it may have a connection to the importance of hats to the Jägerkin army.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Serbian-to-English Translation:  
> "Eight of these from the middle, and... let's go with about twenty of those small ones?"  
> "You from that circus in the south?"  
> "Yes."  
> "When's the show?"  
> "We're not entirely sure, but I think tomorrow. Today is mostly organizing things."  
> "My daughter's been waiting for months for a new group to pass through."  
> "Oh, then I hope she'll enjoy us. Sorry, can I add one of the rose-shaped ones?"  
> "Of course. How are you paying, dinari or...?"  
> "Pax Guilder."  
> "Then for all of this... sixty-seven."


	11. The Pop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rivet puts Alice on the spot. It's less terrible than she expected.

Alice closed her eyes. Right hand out to the side. Left in front, bent at the elbow to be near-parallel.

Breathe.

> _Theodosia writes me a letter every day,_  
>  _I’m keeping her bed warm while her husband is away,_  
>  _He’s on the British side in Georgia,_  
>  _He’s tryin’a keep the colonies in line,_  
>  _He can have all of Georgia,_  
>  _Theodosia, she’s mine._

Lift, sink, _turn_.

(Open her eyes. She couldn’t risk tripping over herself again.)

She could do multiple turns and land properly now. _(It takes and it takes and it takes.)_

She didn’t get much of a chance to practice her isolations, the pop-and-locking that she’d so envied before, and without a mirror it was hard to see how well she was doing, but she tried. _(We laugh and we cry and we break and we make our mistakes.)_

It was a good song, and one she could mostly remember, even. It was one she could move smoothly to at one moment, with sweeping leg movements and arching and the _penché_ that Gospodin Rassmussin had drilled into her.

And in the next moment, she could freeze and hold and drop into the solid, jerking movements she’d put years into, if only in idle moments while alone.

Well.

She _still_ rarely did it unless she was alone. There was a limit to what even Europa enjoyed, and it wasn’t like she had the music for it anywhere outside her own head.

(She was waiting for a song to crop up where she could at least _try_. She’d seen some fascinating things done with the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and she didn’t know when that had come out but it had to have been either already or at least soon, right? And that meant… there’d be something with the right energy, rhythm, _feel_. Soon. There had to be something.)

Rassmussin was working her on Double Fouettés, but those were… difficult.

She did have a feeling she was learning them faster here than she would have back home, had she had a similar training regimen. She didn’t _know_ what was normal back home, but something here felt… different. People learned things so quickly in Europa, gained new skills in such a short time, that she wouldn’t have believed it back home.

She couldn’t have managed to reach this point of flexibility back home in just a few months, she was sure of it. There was a degree of… she was… the world was infecting her. No. That made it sound like it was a disease, and it wasn’t, she was just… naturalizing?

Sure.

Naturalizing.

> _I AM THE ONE THING IN LIFE I CAN CONTROL!_

Butterfly leap.

Fumble.

_Ow._

(Son of a bitch, that one was hard.)

She hissed, getting back to her feet. The tumble had been enough for one leg to sink into the ground, glitching at the edges and sluggishly being forced back out with a staticky feeling that she _really_ didn’t like. The other leg had apparently not been in enough danger to force into the ground, but her ankle ached from the sudden slam into the ground, and her elbow hadn’t faired much better.

Okay.

Fine.

She’d work on that. Not alone, she’d have to wait for Rassmussin, but she’d work on it.

Alice yanked the tie from her hair and redid it. She’d used ribbons at first, ties and pins that sort of worked but tended to fall out when she danced, or took forever to do. She’d tried using rubber bands, since they apparently already existed, but they’d snagged and snapped and ripped her hair out, and given the problems she already had with occasional bald and thin spots, she _really_ didn’t need more of that. She’d finally just bent and gone to the costuming wagon. Organza had taken about thirty seconds to understand what Alice was trying to say about the hair ties she remembered, and then just… did something. Elastic bands already existed, and once Organza had understood what Alice meant about the way fabric worked around it, she’d just… done it. Somehow. It took only three days.

The woman was a genius, and Alice was starting to wonder just how oblivious the circus thought she was. They hid their sparks well, but it was still… she’d been here for _months_. She’d definitely seen things! She’d seen _active fugue states_ , for crying out loud!

(Organza had also appropriated Alice’s pants a few weeks ago, when they’d finally started to tear along one of the outer seams. Alice didn’t know what the woman was doing to it, but there was bound to be _something_ she could learn from the modern fabric, right?)

Alice rolled her neck, her shoulders, her back, and then closed her eyes again.

Different song.

Something bouncy, angry, intense? Pop, definitely. Punk, maybe? No, she needed something with enough words to keep the whole thing running in her mind at a steady tempo while she mouthed the words. No mental instrumentals that skipped forward or back or changed tempo because she had only her brain to work with. Something with words. Punk had words, but not always ones she knew.

(Not always ones she remembered.)

Taylor Swift, maybe?

Yeah, that would work. Specific song… um… Blank Space?

Blank Space it was.

It worked. It was bouncy enough, and she even when she forgot the words, she could mouth them.

And she could just rock out a bit. It wasn’t exactly the kind of music that encouraged a riot, but it worked for now.

“I forgot you could do that.”

Alice froze, just barely keeping herself from falling again. She turned around slowly and… “Hello, Rivet.”

“Can you show me that one?” Rivet asked, coming closer. She approximated one of the moves Alice had done, one of the pose-bounce-whip-slow-pop sets.

(Alice didn’t know how to name what she did.)

“You mean…” she trailed off, biting her lip and trying to remember what exactly she’d done. “Give me a second…”

She closed her eyes, parsing through where she’d been in the song and what she’d been doing. “I think… okay, start like this?”

Rivet copied her for a bit, and it was clear the woman wasn’t quite a dancer herself, but it wasn’t like most people here could—

“Do that again?” Rivet prompted.

Alice blinked at her. “Do what?”

“The… the clank thing. I’ve seen you do it before, but I didn’t look this close before,” Rivet said, looking vaguely fascinated.

Oh dear. Rivet was a mechanics spark, but Alice had read enough of the comic to know that cross-disciplinary sparks were more than a little common.

Alice repeated the movement, a little slower than usual.

“It’s… muscle tension?” Rivet guessed. “Well, no, all of it is, but you’re… the control is odd.”

“I do not know how to explain it,” Alice said, a little helplessly. “It is just… _popping_.”

Rivet tilted her head. “It’s ‘popping?’”

 _“Popping and locking_ ,” Alice confirmed. “Um. They were two styles, but people did them at the same time. I do not remember how they are different.”

“We _really_ haven’t had the right music for you yet, huh?” Rivet asked, frowning. “They were right, it’s weird enough for the townies to love it, but the music just doesn’t fit.”

Alice shook her head.

“Have you tried talking to André?” Rivet asked. “If you can give him something to work with…?”

Alice shook her head again. “No.”

“You could try talking to Rassmussin about it?” Rivet tried. “If you’re doing this hidden away, you clearly miss it, right?”

Alice hesitated. “It… does not fit what he wants now. Maybe later, yes?”

Rivet crossed her arms, frowning again. “What are you afraid of?”

“It does not work,” Alice said. She hugged her arms around herself a little. “It is just that.”

Rivet frowned harder. It was almost a pout.

“And it looks better in a group,” Alice admitted. “And I do not have a mirror. I cannot see if I am doing what I am trying to do, and I am not good enough to dance by myself, I think. This style looks better in… um… with more people?”

“In tandem?” Rivet guessed.

Alice shrugged. The word sounded close enough to the English variant that it was probably the same thing.

Rivet seemed to come to a decision, taking Alice’s wrist in her hand. “Come with me.”

 _I don’t seem to have much of a choice!_ “Okay?”

Rivet took her to André.

“Rivet?” He asked.

Rivet turned to Alice and pointed at André. “Tell him what to do.”

 _“Excuse me?”_ André demanded.

“I don’t think that is a good idea,” Alice managed.

“Nuh-uh,” Rivet said, folding her arms. “You’ve been dancing around the issue for a while, pardon the pun. Tell him the kind of music that will work. I want to see it.”

“I… I mean…” Alice stammered, and then just dropped Romanian altogether. _“I can’t do that. I really can’t do that, I mean, I was never a music major or anything like that, I did choir for a few years and I did musicals but I don’t trust myself to sing and I never even did a capella so I’m really not sure I can—_ ”

“Breathe, girl,” Rivet said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “André’s good at what he does. You give us a little, and we can make it a lot. But you’ve been putting this off for a while and I’m honestly tired of hearing him complain—”

“Hey!”

“—and I’m curious about it myself,” Rivet finished. “So. Tell us what to do.”

“Um,” Alice said, again. She could feel how wide her eyes were. Her cheeks felt warm, even in the cold air. She could feel her chest tightening in anxiety. “I… I mean…”

Rivet folded her arms and turned to André. He threw his hands up in the air and sighed dramatically. “Fine.”

“W…” Alice trailed off again. _“We need a beat and a bass line_.”

Rivet lifted her eyebrow. “Baseline or…”

“Low music,” Alice said. “Um. _I can give you the backbone of the music, and you’ll do the melody?”_

“Will that work?” Rivet asked. André poked her in the ribs, and she swatted his hand away.

Right. André wasn’t one of the ones that spoke English.

Alice shrugged. “We can try.”

Low, _high_ , low-low _-high._ Low, _high_ , low-low _-high._

André frowned, but picked up the rhythm on—the barrel he was sitting on, apparently. That was fine, she could work with that.

At least three other people were coming closer now. She had to—she had to think. Eyes closed, now. Beat. There was a beat. She could work from there.

 _“Give me a second to figure something out_ ,” she said.

She bit her lip, bounced a little, and picked up a bass line. She held up a hand, humming until she figured something out, and then opened her eyes and nodded. André was still holding the beat, face a little annoyed but mostly intrigued, and when she gave him the bassline, he picked it up.

“So now we can add a melody?” Rivet asked.

(Hadn’t André said that Rivet didn’t play, in the comic? That didn’t mean non-musical, but… no, there was something in the novel that— _not the time_.)

“Layers,” Alice said, bouncing a little harder. “Needs more layers.”

“Okay?” Rivet said. “Uh, I mean, Moonsock’s here. She’s got her lute, and I think she’s willing to help.”

Alice closed her eyes and nodded, tossing around a few more backing pieces, and then rattled off a few measures of backing. Twice more, as other members joined in out of curiosity if nothing else, and there was… something.

It was shaping up. Simplistic, very much so, but not terrible for something off the cuff and by a complete amateur.

“Okay,” Alice said, opening her eyes and looking at Rivet. _“Now_ there can be a melody.”

“I don’t do music myself,” Rivet said flatly. There was a grin at the edge of her mouth. “But hey, this _is_ weird. I think… Delilah? Think you can manage something?”

“I guess?” The woman in question was older than half the camp, but she had the kind of powerful, lively voice that roused entire villages. “I don’t suppose you have any idea of how this should sound?”

Alice tilted her head, still bouncing, and said, _“Jagged. Maybe a little angry. Rousing._ ”

Rivet translated, as the only person present who wasn’t already focused on playing a song or otherwise occupied.

“Hey, Rivet!”

Yeti? And he had—oh.

“I got that mirror you wanted!”

Rivet gave Alice a grin that was just a little too much like the cat that got the canary.

Fine.

She could work with that.

André somehow smoothly passed off the beat and bassline to Yeti, and came to stand next to Rivet and— _goddammit, that was Rassmussin, the Countess_ , _**and** Master Payne._

Alice gave Rivet’s grin a glare and turned to the mirror.

It was one of the ones that Payne used for his tricks during the shows, the biggest in the camp and reinforced several times over so it wouldn’t break in travel. It was, honestly, pretty much perfect.

Alice closed her eyes, felt the music she’d more or less built herself, and sank into the improvisational headspace that she usually only used when she was alone. Delilah started singing, and Alice bounced on the balls of her toes, letting the rhythm fill her up.

It wasn’t quite what she was used to.

It wasn’t quite right.

It was a damn sight closer than usual, though.

Eyes open.

Breathe.

_Move._

Jump, land, hypertense slow-mo arch, spin, leap back, roll.

Lift up onto one hand, b-girl pose she’d never learned the name of, kick, land, spin to face the mirror and whip arms out to the side.

Forward aerial, land low, slow rise with arms out and crooked forward, draw in and spin as standing up is quickened, pose.

Head tilt to the side, follow through with a ‘fall,’ shoulder roll, come up into lunge, arms wrapping around and forward, facing out and wrist-first, touch and—

Turn to the mirror, wide spin of arms, bring together, jerk left, jerk right, grin and spread, pop through the motions, or lock, whatever it may have been, just—

Hypertense and then loose, over and again, jerking movements that were trained and just this side of inhuman, too much and too little, and—

 _Grin because it’s too much, grin because it’s more than there’s been in months, pop the chest forward and then drop and do the knee thing, it’s not a time for words and it’s not a time for thoughts, it’s time to let the music sink in and the beat fill the soul, maybe André_ is _a music spark, because this feels right, it feels full, it feels—_

_It’s not EDM, it’s not R &B, it’s not pop and it’s not rap and it’s not country and it’s not electroswing and it’s not punk or rock or some Hans Zimmer stuff, but it’s got a beat and it’s got a drive and it’s **enough.**_

Spin, like she couldn’t before, jump and twist like she still was scared to do but stuck the landing anyway, the hand-and-face synchronization she loved, hip movements she was still wary of doing around people who might have disapproved, stomps she was rarely allowed to do because it all came across as too vulgar, the shuddering movements and isolations and god, the music was building to a crescendo, she didn’t know how she could feel it reaching an end when it was impromptu nonsense and not a song she’d half-memorized, maybe it was André, maybe it was just something normal, maybe it was just—

She flipped head-over-heels, stuck a landing, dropped into a sitting pose, and met her own eyes in the mirror, set in a face that was flushed in the cheeks and sweating more than winter should have ever seen, over a wild grin and ragged hair and a song that had hit a final note and ended still hanging half-hearted in the air.

She breathed.

The grin wasn’t leaving her face.

She couldn’t force it away.

She’d been vulgar, probably, weird and foreign and unpleasantly different, but—

“Good heavens,” Master Payne said.

Alice met his eyes in the mirror and then let herself fall backwards with a breathless laugh, laying out parallel to the mirror and looking sideways at the gathered circus, one knee still bent up as the other leg stayed flat to the ground. She stretched, dropped her head to the side, and smiled.

 _“It’s been forever since I could do that,”_ she said. Was she high on endorphins? Something like that. _“I missed it.”_

“We… could tell,” Rivet said, looking a little gobsmacked herself.

“That music felt like magic,” Alice said, looking at André. He looked a little worried, suddenly, like his conducting was somehow a massive crime that—oh, right. Sparks. Alice gave him another grin. “Thanks!”

“… _this_ is what you would have been doing with the right music?” The Countess asked.

Alice closed her eyes and nodded. The smile was still on her face. Were they judging her? She didn’t care. That had been amazing. “Not right away. I could not do the jumps, before. I could not bend that way. Gospodin Rassmussin has helped very much. The music is not all right, but it is closer.”

Nobody said anything for a bit, and Alice didn’t move. There was a pleasant ache in her muscles, a low burn that would probably suck tonight, but was amazing right now.

“You okay, there?” Yeti called over.

Alice shrugged, still not getting up. “Yeah. I think so.”

A thought struck her. She sat up with a jolt, and then looked at André. Her eyes were probably too wide. No time to care. “We can do that again sometime, right?”

“Yes,” Master Payne said, before André could so much as open his mouth. “I rather think we can.”

Alice let herself fall down again. _“Awesomesauce._ ”

o.o.o.o.o

Later that night, Alice felt the strain catching up to her. Everyone had eyed her oddly through most of the afternoon, whether they’d seen the performance or not. It was only as she’d prepared for bed that she realized why.

The music had felt like magic. She’d noted already that it might have been Sparkwork.

They were wondering if she’d realized she’d been swept up into the wave of a Spark’s full fugue. She wasn’t sure that was how it worked, but it made more sense than anything, that André had managed to use his position as conductor to do _something_ to the make the music fit together properly.

“You said that kind of dancing was done in groups?” Olga asked.

Alice looked over. “Hm?”

Olga repeated the question.

Alice blinked slowly at her, processing the words, and then shrugged. “Sometimes. They would, um… _they’d do a lot of the choreography in groups, with individuals coming forward to do routines that featured their own specialty as everyone else did something simpler in the back._ ”

“I’ve seen you do bits like that before,” Olga said. “I never really thought it would look like _that_ when it was all together, though.”

Alice shrugged. “Good or bad surprise?”

“Good,” Olga assured her. “I don’t think anyone was expecting that, but now that they’ve seen you go all-out, they might reconsider.”

Alice snorted. _“I know nobody was really expecting much._ ”

Olga wrinkled her nose. “That isn’t true.”

“I’m the dumb one,” Alice said flatly. She gave Olga a look that was… well, unamused, mostly. “There are many smart people in this circus. I have… _I’ve needed training and to be taught skills you all take for granted. I’m honestly not sure why you guys have kept me around so long._ ”

Olga shrugged. “You need to ask Master Payne that, but I’d say it was probably the potential.”

“Ha,” Alice didn’t quite laugh. “Sure. I believe that.”

Olga gave her an unsure look, like she didn’t believe her but wasn’t entirely convinced it would be a good idea to point that out, which was fair; Alice _didn’t_ believe her, and it _wasn’t_ a good idea to point that out.

“I’m taking you shopping tomorrow,” Olga declared.

“Wait, what?” Alice sat up and stared at her.

“Tomorrow we hit town,” Olga said, grinning wide. “It’s not big, but I’m going to take you shopping.”

“I don’t need anything.”

“Don’t care! Window-shopping, at least. We can bring Lars and Benjamin and Yeti, if you want.”

“Wh—why them?”

Olga shrugged. “You _do_ seem to get along with them better than most of the circus.”

“Uh…” Alice wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I mean. Sure?”

Olga smiled with a few too many teeth. “Great!”

o.o.o.o.o

“So, why did she bring us?” Benjamin asked under his breath.

Alice shrugged. “I don’t know. She thinks we are better friends than I am with the other parts of the circus.”

“Members.”

“That.”

Benjamin hummed lowly, considering. “Does she… know?”

Alice shot him a furtive look, and then straight ahead, where the other three were walking. Going by the laughter, Yeti had just told a joke that was far too funny to ignore. “No.”

“Ah.”

“Lars does.”

“Oh? How did that happen?”

Alice shrugged. “There was a nice conversation. He thought it meant something different, and tried to kiss me.”

“…and?”

“And he stopped when I looked, um, uncomfortable? And then he asked if it was too fast, and I thought it would hurt him less if he knew it was _that_ and not him.”

“You told him because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings,” Benjamin said flatly. “That sounded like a good idea to you?”

Alice shrugged. “ _You’re_ not hiding it, so the circus is safe, yes? He was nice about it.”

Benjamin groaned and ran a hand down his face. “You make terrible decisions, Alice.”

“I know.”

Olga’s voice cut through before they could keep going. “Hey, hurry up you two! We’re almost there!”

The two shared one more look, and then picked up the pace.

The market was small and limited in many ways. With how much could be provided at a higher quality by the circus members, market trips were usually reserved for raw materials and local delicacies.

Alice wasn’t a Spark and wasn’t often the best person to bring along for food adventures, so local markets tended to end with a small souvenir or piece of cheap jewelry, if anything.

She’d expected the same of today, really, except Olga grabbed her arm an hour in and excitedly dragged her to small stall.

“Books?” Alice asked. “I still cannot read Romanian well, Olga, I—”

“No, not books!” Olga said. “Journals!”

She picked one up and opened it, flipping through a bunch of blank pages as if to show off exactly what they were.

…that was fair, honestly, ‘journal’ was arguably not the kind of word she could be sure was in Alice’s vocabulary.

“They’re… pretty,” Alice admitted, picking one up and running a hand over the cover. Leather. God, that had to be expensive. She could probably afford it, but…

“You said you wanted to be a writer once, right?” Olga prompted. “Step one: start writing.”

Alice looked at her, wide-eyed. “Uh. I don’t… think my stories would really be normal for—”

“You thought the dancing was wrong, too,” Olga reminded her. The smile on her face was all teeth. “And it was good. So your stories will be new, big whoop! They’ll be _interesting_ , then.”

Alice looked down at the journal in her hands. She looked at the ones on the table.

She flipped through another one.

Another.

Fifteen minutes, comparing spines and page counts and covers and prices.

Fifteen minutes, weighing pros and cons.

Fifteen minutes, Olga offering commentary on every last one.

Alice bought three.


	12. The Leading Lady

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice has friends. She does not have a healthy brain. These things clash more than you'd think.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: extended conversation on mental illnesses, their effects, and how to handle them. POV from a character dealing with rejection sensitivity and impostor syndrome.

“I hate the cold.”

“Okay.”

“I really hate the cold.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to be outside if I don’t have to be.”

“Trust me, I know.”

Alice glared at Yeti where he stood. He was smiling at her. Asshole.

“What do you want?” she finally sighed.

“You said you can’t play any instruments well, right?” He quirked a grin. “Buuuuuut you can sing.”

“With practice, yeah,” Alice said. She made a face. “A _lot_ of practice. The fact that I can hear myself go… um…”

“Out of tune,” Yeti suggested, then repeated himself in English.

Alice blinked. “Yeah. I can hear myself go out of tune, but that doesn’t help me get it _right_.”

“So we practice,” Yeti said. He held up the tambur with raised brows. “And I’ll do accompaniment.”

Alice eyes him with apprehension. “What kind of music is it? Are the lyrics written down, somewhere?”

“Not trusting your memory?”

 _“Absolutely not_ ,” Alice muttered. “No, no, I’m not.”

“Then we’ll get them written down,” Yeti said. “You’ve got a notebook, _and_ the songs that André suggested are in English.”

She could feel the tension lessening, if only a little. “That… will help.”

“I know,” Yeti said. He sat down, holding the tambur, and told her to get the notebook out. “Let’s start.”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice kept her face just a touch to slack and a touch too wide-eyed, a little sad and a lot distant. She sat on a low fence, ankles crossed, elbows locked to keep her shoulders high, balanced as she leaned forward to stare little children in the face and sing foreign lullabies and fae-chants.

> _Say hello to the Queen, hello to the land!_   
>  _England may sink, but slows at her hand!_   
>  _We’ll never see sun, or clouds, or the sky!_   
>  _We’ll always be wet, so don’t even try!_

Some of them were a little… odd.

> _Dance, sing, be merry and true,_   
>  _Death comes for us all, and yes, even you._   
>  _Live while you can, enjoy that you’re free,_   
>  _For bones, ash, and dust, is what we’ll all be._

Morbid hedonism was frequent.

> _She stands upon a shattered throne,_   
>  _Wreathed in stars you’ve never known,_   
>  _Destinies writ to the bone,_   
>  _Lady Fate: maid, mother, and crone._

Some she didn’t even understand.

> _Look how the light of the town_   
>  _the lights of the town are shining now_   
>  _Tonight I'll be dancing around_   
>  _I'm off on the road to Galway now_   
>  _Look how she's off on the town_   
>  _She's off on a search for sailors though_   
>  _There's fine fellas here to be found_   
>  _She's never been one to stay at home_

And some she even recognized.

(Celtic Woman. She _definitely_ recognized that one from Celtic Woman.)

And… okay, so her voice cracked sometimes. There were definitely some sour pitches, and she cursed herself every time she fumbled a lyric, but people by and large didn’t notice or didn’t care, depending on the mistake in question.

“Got any songs on your mind?” Yeti asked, stepping closer and pretending Alice hadn’t immediately grabbed his free hand with a hiss of relief.

(It was so cold.)

(So. Cold.)

(Yeti was warm, though.)

“Nothing you know,” Alice said. “And I do not remember all the words.”

“Can I hear what you remember anyway?”

Alice bit her lip. There _was_ a song that had come to mind with some of the patterns and melodies she’d learned. “Um… okay? I only remember one… um, set?”

_“Strofă? Stanţă?”_

“Oh, it’s the same. Yes. Stanza.”

“Sing it anyway.”

“…fine.”

> _Raindrops on roses_   
>  _And whiskers on kittens_   
>  _Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens_   
>  _Brown paper packages tied up with strings_   
>  _These are a few of my favorite things_

She trailed off, biting her lip. She remembered something about… blue dresses and satin sashes. Something like… like…

Nope.

“It’s nice,” Yeti told her. He clapped her on the shoulder, light enough that she didn’t go stumbling from it. “Wish I could hear the rest.”

“So do I,” Alice muttered. She pulled her hand from his and looked at it. Still yellowed. Maybe if she spun? Forced blood back into her hands with… centrifugal or centripetal force, though god only knew she couldn’t remember which was which.

“Looks bad,” Yeti commented.

Alice shrugged. “Used to it.”

“Come here,” Yeti sighed, taking both of her hands between his. Oh, warm _and_ big. Nice. “You should have worn the gloves.”

“I did,” Alice admitted. “They kept… um. The fence caught them. The wood was… rough? I was worried they would be hurt.”

“You were worried about damaging the gloves,” Yeti said, just clarifying, and Alice nodded. “Well, okay then. Maybe just keep them on and ask Organza for help next time, though.”

Alice made a face.

“You can ask for help, Alice.”

“I already ask for too much,” she said. “I do not… oh.”

“Hm?” Yeti asked.

“I… it is nothing,” Alice said. She could feel her stomach curdling.

Duh. Seamstress.

She kept expecting the same thing as—

“It’s nothing,” she repeated, stressing the words as best she could. “I am fine.”

She was a universe away. It hadn’t been that bad in the first place.

She was _fine._

o.o.o.o.o

“Okay,” Alice muttered. “Lunge?”

Lars acquiesced, sinking forwards and… not planting his back knee. Okay, so he wanted to show off too.

“Tell me if it hurts,” Alice said, placing one foot on the bend between his upper leg and hip. She could actually feel his hip bone against her instep. Huh. “Hands?”

He held them out, and she took them, then started slowly transferring her weight to the foot planted on his leg. He didn’t show any discomfort, and she leaned back, pulling on his arms as an anchor as she lifted the leg that had previously been on the ground and straightened the one that held her up, standing on Lars’s own leg. She lifted her knee up between them, leaned further back so she wouldn’t accidentally kick him in the face, and straightened it out until she was doing a full split.

She grit her teeth as she wobbled a little, and then slowly lowered her leg back down. “Good?”

“I’m good!” Lars called back. “You have more in mind?”

“A little!”

“Go for it!”

Alice put her free leg on his shoulder, then pulled on his arms to bring herself back in. She transferred her weight to his shoulder, and then paused. “I will… use my hands to stand on your hands?”

“…I think I know what you’re saying,” Lars said. He shifted a little, and then said, “Give me a moment, actually.”

He brought his back knee down, planting himself a little more solidly, and then nodded to Alice. “I’m good.”

She nodded, and focused on what she was doing. She finally took her foot off of his hip and lifted it straight back, trying to keep her spine straight up even as she put her weight on his shoulder and hands. He hissed out a slow breath himself as Alice put more of her weight on his hands, and straightened out the leg that had been on his shoulder.

“Good?” She called down.

“Good,” he said, sounding a little strained. “You said you saw this before?”

“Yes!” Alice said. She crooked her front leg until it rested against Lars’s back and uses it as leverage to bring forward her other leg, angling her hips oddly to get her knee through, and then lowering herself down to sit on his right shoulder and bicep, heels to his back. She straightened her legs out after a moment’s thought, leaning back and balancing while still holding his hands for help. She met his eyes and grinned. “Fun?”

“Not what I expected,” Lars said. He grinned back, though. “But I’ve seen this stuff before. Maybe try it with Benjamin?”

“You want to get rid of me that quickly?” Alice asked, faking a gasp of surprise. She lifted Lars’s hands up, widened her own grin, and leaned backwards. She slid back, pulling his shirt with the friction, a keeping a tension on his arms that warned him not to let go. Her knees hit his shoulder, and she kept leaning back. “Down.”

Lars raised an eyebrow, and then laughed when she ended up lying on his leg, her neck aching as she tried not to let her head fall down. His knee only reached to just below the bony knob at the top of her spine, and there was nothing to support her head.

“Hold my knees?” She asked, and let go of his hands. He did as she asked, and she… well, first she dramatically spread them out wide, and crossed her ankles again, and smiled, and _then_ she tucked them behind her head to hold it up herself.

“Having fun?” Lars asked.

“Yes,” Alice said, sticking her tongue out at him. “Hey, what if you stood? And turned?”

“Like… spinning?” Lars asked.

She nodded.

“I’d be worried that I was going to drop you,” Lars told her, utterly frank. “So no.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “Boo.”

“You say that now, but at least you’re not getting injured.”

 _That’s because I can’t be_. “Something else, then?”

Lars shrugged, jostling her. “Sure. Or you could get Benjamin.”

“You are focusing on him.”

“Yes. He’s your _partner_ for this kind of thing,” Lars said. “Also you look uncomfortable.”

“I am.”

Lars snorted out a laugh and helped her rearrange herself so she could get down without fumbling.

“I seriously think we should get Benjamin for this,” he insisted. “You’ve got good ideas, but he’d be better at this. I’m an actor, I don’t know this stuff, but he’s on the silks and knows what he’s doing when it comes to acrobatic stuff.”

“Yes. That means I do not need to… um…” Impress. She didn’t know ‘impress.’ “Be good enough that you are happy about it?”

He stared at her. “I thought we were—”

“Hey, kids!”

Herr Doktor Flatmo’s voice caught their attention before that particular argument could happen again. He waved them over impatiently. “Naomi found us a new actress!”

Lars lit up. “Oh? How’s that?”

Alice tucked her hands behind herself as she followed along behind them, tuning out Flatmo’s hyperpaced explanation, mostly because she tried to follow along and failed for the first fifteen seconds. It was less of a conscious decision and more just giving up.

Alice stayed in the back as they came up on the rest of the gathered group. It wasn’t the entire circus, far from it, but there were still at least a dozen. Nobody new had joined since Alice, other than a few of those girls that Lars had mentioned from the comic, who joined only as far as the next ton, but she knew it was normally a big deal.

Young. Blonde. Confident, if a bit irritable.

“What is her name?” Alice asked, voice low.

“Pix,” Flatmo responded. He gave her a look, annoyed. “Were you not listening?”

“You spoke too fast for me,” Alice said. “I could not understand.”

“Hmph.”

Lars had already moved forward to introduce himself, so… Olga!

Olga was safe.

Probably.

“Hey,” Alice said, slipping in next to her. Still on the outer edge. Good. “What is Pix’s story?”

“Nobody told you?”

“Flatmo speaks very fast.”

“Ah, yeah, that would do it,” Olga said. “Hm. She was part of a different show, but most of them got arrested a few months ago. She was their leading lady, managed to talk her way out getting jailed with them, but the town is small enough that it doesn’t get many shows passing through, so she’s been working at a bar and waiting for a chance to join up and get on the road again.”

Alice nodded slowly, processing, and then once more, sharply.

Olga took the cue. “We don’t know where she was from before that, but her accent is a little closer to the Carpathians than where we are now. She knows some of the Heterodyne plays, did a scene from _Butcher of Kiev_ with the Countess as Lucrezia and the High Priestess.”[1]

“And?”

“And she’s _really good_ ,” Olga said. She seemed excited. “She’s been on the road before, knows a lot of the shows already, and she’s apparently a great actress. It might be different on stage, but probably not, which means she can take over all the Lucrezia stuff. I’m tired of it, honestly.”

“Cool.”

“Not sure where we’re going to put her yet,” Olga said. “Maybe Baba Yaga, if she can drive her.”

“Traditional newbie wagon.”

“Yep,” Olga said, humming happily.

“Didn’t put me there.”

“Yeah, well, you were kinda… obvious about how much you didn’t know about that sort of thing,” Olga said with a shrug. Her eyes were still delightedly fixed on Pix. She seemed distracted. “And we wanted someone to be able to keep an eye on you.”

“But she will be fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Olga said. She finally looked at Alice. “You wanna go say hi with me?”

“No, thank you,” Alice said. She smiled. “You go, I will go to the wagon.”

“Sure thing!”

Alice smiled until Olga was finally over to where Pix was, and then let it drop.

Nobody was paying attention to her anyway. Didn’t matter if she stopped faking being okay.

Pix was canon, anyway. She was fine. She was supposed to be here. Her being great at her job was a plot point for a reason.

Pix was always going to show up, and she was always going to be great, and she was always going to fit in.

Pix was always going to be the star of the show, competent and dazzling and too clever by half.

Pix was always going to belong.

o.o.o.o.o

The first few pages of one of Alice’s journals had been blocked off before she started. Snippets of words. Lines that had no story, just a sensation and a flash of insight. Paragraphs that would find a home in a story that suited them, one day, if they were very, very lucky.

She added a little every day.

**_Disembodied Dialogue Page:_ **

_"But you see," she said, with a smile that did not reach her eyes, nor even attempt to do so, "that is how the world chooses to work when the grown-ups aren't looking."_

_"I will bribe the FUCK out of as many elected officials as I have to if it means a chance at shoving a live crab down the back of the king’s trousers."_

_“Careful, my dear. There are many ghosts in the castle, but the most dangerous one will always be the one that holds your hand. Kisses you. Makes love to you in the deep secrets of the night. We are all monsters, but I’m the one hiding behind a smile. You didn’t think you could trust me, did you?”_

_“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, blah, blah, blah. Magic’s all well and good, but haven’t you ever just shot the wee beastie in the head? So much faster!”_

_“A neutron flow doesn’t have a polarity, my dear, do try to keep up.”_

_“Smile in the mirror. Smile in the face of strangers. Smile to your family. Smile to your friends. Smile until it feels real and the pain fades, because if you let the pain rule you, it will destroy you. So smile, for you’ve so much more to lose than you think you do.”_

_“Oh, we’re going to overthrow the local government? Awesome! It’s been a while since I did that.”_

_“Of course I exist. All of the other options are too boring for me to bother with.”_

_“They say that the fastest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I’ve always found that going between the ribs is faster. They’ve started expecting that, though, so I poisoned the tea. Fancy some?”_

_“There are so many hidden things in this world that you could search your whole life and never find them. Don’t give yourself an endless goal, just a repeating one. Make a person smile every day. Learn a new recipe whenever you have free time. Teach yourself an instrument. You can always improve, always do more, but don’t try to find all the secrets, and don’t try to go beyond what you can. Terrible things are hiding, and immortality is far more trouble than it’s worth.”_

o.o.o.o.o

The screaming happened in the middle of the night. It woke Olga up first, the shooting and screams and ragged howls. It took Alice longer, her fatigue exacerbated by the anxiety of a new, welcomed arrival. She’d always been able to sleep through some unexpected things, and woke at the slightest hints of others. It was a trait one picked up in college, she’d found.

It was not the first time it had happened, and Alice had done as Olga did, every time, and stayed huddled in the wagon. She wasn’t a fighter, but many of the others were. They were also Sparks, of course, and very insistent on hiding that.

(Seriously. How oblivious did they think she was?)

(Had they been planning on telling her at all?)

God, she was tired. And cold. And just kind of grumpy all around.

They waited a few minutes after the screaming stopped, pulling on extra layers so they could go outside and investigate. They needed to see if anyone was injured.

If anyone was dead.

Hopefully not…

Olga was done first, and Alice slipped out after her, heading for the fire at the center of camp.

Lars was panicking.

People were saying things around him, waving vials and using words Alice didn’t understand, and none of it was really helping Lars at all. They stifled themselves as Olga reached them, with odd glances in Alice’s direction, and as Pix’s own shouting reached them.

Lars was still panicking.

The danger was gone, and he was still saying something about sparkhounds, and absolutely nobody seemed to have a reasonable idea of how to help.

She hadn’t seen him panic before, not in real life. She hadn’t seen it before, not on him. She hadn’t seen it with how often he was gone, and how often she was squirreled away, untrusted.

She’d seen it in comic form, in the novel, and it struck so much harder now.

Alice wasn’t sure what the look on her face was. Given how people moved out of her way, she guessed it probably wasn’t pleasant. She walked towards Lars, pausing just at the end. She tapped Augie on the shoulder.

“Move,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, “Please.”

“You can’t help him,” Olga said, with a sympathetic, almost pitying smile. “He’s always like this.”

Alice looked at her for a longer stretch than either was really comfortable with, the cogs of her mind struggling to crank through a sleep-deprived fog and the various things competing for her attention. She finally settled on ignoring everyone and everything else, and got to her knees in front of where Lars was panicking in his seat on the ground.

She took his hands in hers and pulled him closer. He didn’t seem to notice her, so she said, “Hey.”

He didn’t seem to notice that either.

Hm. Okay. Visual and auditory stimuli weren’t going to get through to him. Smell and food were out of the question. Patterns, maybe.

She kept holding his hands, thinking. Squeeze. Relax. Squeeze. Relax.

She started humming.

It wasn’t necessarily a recommended process anywhere. She was pretty sure she’d seen something about not grabbing anyone when these kinds of things happened, but those were also for fairly different traumas, and he hadn’t even seemed to notice her. Right now, she was just trying to provide a source of—

“—calming pie!”

“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” She snapped, turning to look at Chef Taki with as strong a glare as she could manage. _“He’s already freaked out enough, don’t make it worse!”_

“But—”

“No!”

Dame Aedith actually took Taki by the arm to pull him back, an odd look still fixed on Alice.

Whatever.

Goddamn it. It was four in the morning, probably, and she was tired, and grumpy, and anxious, and wanted to go to sleep. If people wanted to be weird, then _whatever_.

She turned back to Lars, who was… staring at her, now.

“Hi,” she said.

He’d stopped yelling about sparkhounds at least, but he was hyperventilating and wide-eyed and looked like he was scared that she was about to eat him.

“You are going to breathe,” she said. “In, four. Hold, eight. Out, seven. Follow my hand.”

Lars gaped at her, hyperventilation stopping for just a second, and starting up even faster than before.

“Okay,” Alice said. She readjusted her seating so that she was cross-legged, and released one of Lars’s hands. She held out her free hand, palm up, and started lifting it. “Breathe in, two, three, four.”

Fist, palm downwards. “Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.”

Open hand, palm down, lowering. “Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

“In, two, three, four.”

“Hold, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.”

“Out, two, three, four, five, six, seven.”

Again.

Again.

Again.

Aga—“Eyes on me. Ignore the things behind me. I do not care what they are doing to that wolf. It does not matter. Look at me. Breathe, two, three, four.”

Again.

He calmed down in stages. He had to be verbally distracted from the sparks.

She didn’t know if he calmed down faster than usual, or slower, or at the same speed as always. She just counted for him.

“You look terrible,” he said, after he’d finally stopped breathing so harshly that he couldn’t get a word out beyond ‘sparkhounds!’

“I feel terrible,” she told him. “It is late. I am tired. My brain is sad. I want to sleep.”

“But you’re here.”

“People screamed.”

“The others went to bed.”

“Not everyone.”

“But you’re helping me.”

“Everyone had bad ideas. I have done this before. It is not a fun place for your brain. I can help, so I did.”

“You didn’t have to.”

 _“With great power comes great responsibility,”_ she quoted, and then shook her head. “No, not right. I am not… I do not have power? I do not have power. But I can help, because I know how it is to be you right now. My bad brain time is smaller, often. Sometimes there is not a reason that people can see. Or I am quiet, and people do not notice, or I hide. I have this—no, no, these. I have these problems. I have many of them, and my fear is not the same as yours, but I knew many, before, who did have the same problem. This is one way that some could find help, the way to breathe. They felt fear about other things. But the way to help has less… ways? You breathe. You find something else to look at. You write. You, um, break the circle?”

“The cycle,” Lars said. He was staring at her again.

“Yes. The cycle. Your head tries to run in a cycle that does not help you feel happy. It makes you feel angry, or sad, and for small reasons, or for reasons that do not matter anymore. It makes a small problem feel big, sometimes. Sometimes you cannot get out of that cycle without help. A friend, a book, a pet. Hugs are good. Eh, _distractions_ , other things to think about, they are good. A story is good. Sometimes it helps to get rid of the extra, um, energy. You run, or dance, or find a tree that you can punch and not hurt yourself. You find a focus, and it will help you not think about the problem that was hurting you.”

Alice realized she hadn’t been meeting Lars’s eyes in quite some time now. She looked back up at him and smiled nervously.

“My brain is not a happy place,” she said. “I learned ways to help myself, and to help friends with brains that are not happy places. A small problem, or one that is not here, should not hurt that much.”

Lars pulled her into a hug.

“Oh! Um. Okay,” Alice said, and hugged him back. “I am very tired, but I like hugs. Thank you.”

He stopped hugging her, pulling away to stare at her in astonishment. “You’re thanking _me?_ Do you know how long it’s been since someone tried to help in a way that wasn’t completely sp—ridiculous?”

“Hey!” someone yelled. Several someones, actually. Whatever.

“You actually know this stuff,” Lars said. “You—did you study psychology?”

“Not much.”

“Okay, fine, but you still know these… these ways of helping and it’s not very fast but it is working _so_ much better than what everyone else tried,” Lars said. “They usually just make things worse!”

“I believe you.”

He hugged her again. “Please be the one to talk to me if that happens again.”

“Okay.”

“And sleep? You look incredibly tired.”

“I am.”

“Go sleep.”

“I will.”

 _“Now_ , Alice.”

Alice rolled her eyes and got to her feet as Lars pushed her away. There was still something panicky about his eyes, something haggard and chased, but he’d been living in the Wastelands with the circus for nearly a decade. She trusted that he could find his way to a calmer state from here.

She made her way back to the wagon, ignoring everyone else, stripped off the extra layers, and collapsed into bed.

Fucking finally.

* * *

 

[1] _The Heterodyne Boys and the Butcher of Kiev_ was known to have one of the most well-known plot twists of the genre, and one of the most enjoyed, as well. The revelation that the butcher was actually the cakemaker was always met with gasps, even by those that had seen the play before. The revelation that the cakemaker was Lucrezia, of course, tended to result in wolf-whistles as Bill proceeded to redeem her.


	13. The Slump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice just has a shitty day. There are other things, and there were supposed to be more, but... sometimes it's just not in the cards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for an extended depressive episode characterized primarily by lethargy, executive dysfunction, and emotional emptiness/negativity, as well as minor paranoia and an aborted thought spiral inspired by skillset insecurity and something of an inferiority complex.

She woke up feeling empty.

Olga was already gone, and the hushed sounds of the early morning of the circus drifted faintly through the wagon’s walls. Alice closed her eyes, found that it itched to do so, and opened them to stare at the opposing wall, dimly lit by the sun streaming in through the windows, patchy and pale and blurry to her naked eyes.

She could get up.

She didn’t.

Rassmussin was going to want to see her soon. Breakfast was probably half over. She was going to have to talk about last night. She was supposed to talk to Benjamin, and see how the rehearsals went with Pix, and do some chores.

It all seemed like too much.

She closed her eyes, ignored the itchy feeling, and tried to convince herself to get up.

No dice.

Pushing herself up seemed like so much effort. Pulling her legs up seemed like too much effort. Readjusting her head so her neck wasn’t at a weird angle that would give her a crick seemed like too much effort.

It was going to be one of those days, then.

Her eyes stayed closed, and she felt herself enter a distant haze, not quite sleeping, but not entirely awake, either.

(If she wasn’t going to leave bed, she was going to take what use from it she could.)

She lay there for an hour and a half before someone thought to come check on her, her only real movement being that she finally forced herself to change positions enough that she saved her neck some future pain.

The door opened.

“Alice? Are you awake?” Olga asked, slipping into the wagon and closing the door behind her.

It took a few long, unending moments for the words to process, for Alice to claw herself to as wakeful a state as she could manage.

She opened her eyes and looked at Olga. It probably looked like a glare, from this angle and with the squint of a myopic, astigmatic woman without her glasses.

“Are you okay?” Olga asked, taking a seat on her own bed. She seemed… hesitant. Wary? “Breakfast is almost over, and Embi and Taki said they hadn’t seen you.”

Alice blinked at her. It took longer than it should have to find her voice. “I am not.”

Olga nodded, still hesitant. “Is it… the stuff you said to Lars yesterday?”

Alice didn’t remember everything she’d said to Lars. She remembered the vague shape of it, but it was mostly a blur.  Something about anxiety, definitely, and how it worked for her, probably?

 _“Kinda,_ ” she said. _“Different problem, but still just… bad brain stuff. Executive dysfunction, a dash of depression, all topped off with a heaping dose of sleep deprivation and unrelated low-level, long-term anxiety.”_

By the end, she was basically rattling it off.

Olga stared at her. “I understood… maybe half of that.”

 _“Now you know how I feel all the time_ ,” Alice grumbled, which probably wasn’t fair, really. _“No, you felt like this when I still knew nothing and you were working on your English. You already knew. That comment wasn’t okay from me, sorry.”_

Olga continued to look unsure and worried. “Are you… going to get up?”

Alice blinked at her. _“I don’t know. Eventually. Nothing wants to work right now.”_

Olga… kept staring. “Do you _want_ to get up?”

 _“Kinda,”_ Alice said. Oh hey, look. The energy to roll over a bit. Nice. _“More as I talk to you. I feel more like a person.”_

Yeah, Olga was still looking confused and worried. “As opposed to…?”

Alice would have tilted her head if she’d had the energy for it.

“Oh, um,” Olga said, realizing her mistake. “You feel more like a person instead of _what?”_

Alice considered that. _“Instead of feeling like nothing. Or empty. Or like nothing matters.”_

“Okay,” Olga said. She nodded slowly. “That’s… okay, then. That sounds bad.”

 _“It’s normal,”_ Alice said. She managed a shrug. _“These things happen.”_

Olga hesitated, and then asked, “What caused this?”

 _“My brain’s a jerk,”_ Alice said flatly. _“I’m mentally ill, probably some degree of clinically depressed and anxious, so these things happen. Recent stressors and sleep deprivation didn’t help, and breakfast probably would have made things better, but knowing that doesn’t help if I can’t make myself get up_ in the first place.”

She spat the last few words, snapping just a little.

“You don’t like this,” Olga said. “Is there… anything I can do to help? Or someone I can get? Last night when you were talking to Lars, you said something about physical contact? Hugs?”

Alice closed her eyes. “Um. Yeah. Please. _If you’re okay with that._ ”

“Of course I am,” Olga muttered, transferring to Alice’s bed and, after a moment, bodily leveraging Alice up into a sitting position.

Alice, unsurprisingly, squeaked.

“Sitting up might help, right?” Olga asked. She sat down next to Alice and tucked the smaller girl into her side. She grabbed the glasses after a moment and held them where Alice could take them.

The fact that it took several seconds for Alice to work up the energy to do even that was not a great sign.

The fact that it took another twenty minutes for her to work up the energy to get dressed, with Olga’s coaxing, wasn’t good either.

o.o.o.o.o

Alice spent the first hour outside the wagon quiet and a little melancholy. It was a travel day, which meant that she had almost no time to do anything between actually leaving bed and getting on the road.

She got an apple, though. Someone had saved her some of the scrambled eggs. Food helped. Water helped.

She was feeling a little more like a person, now.

“You should talk to the Countess,” Olga suggested quietly. The wagons were too loud for anyone to hear them without shouting. “She might have something that could help, if it’s that brain chemistry problem.”

“Not if I do not know what is in her medicines,” Alice said. “Too many have, um… _drugs? Heroine and cocaine and stuff like that._ ”

“And that’s bad.”

“Very.”

Olga shook her head. “Okay, then. You actually studied this, I’m guessing.”

“It was, uh, _common knowledge, back home_ ,” Alice said. Today was hard. Romanian was hard. She wanted to cry, a little.

Fuck this, seriously.

“If you want, you can go back inside and nap?” Olga suggested. “If not enough sleep was part of the problem.”

Alice shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Go,” Olga urged her. “Maybe you’ll feel better.”

Alice considered it, and then nodded.

There was a bag of espresso beans near her bed, still unopened since she’d bought them. She didn’t have anything for making espresso yet, and she didn’t like Turkish coffee, despite it being the most common brewing method in the area. Most of the methods she knew didn’t exist yet, and the ones that did were… largely not to her taste.

So a bag of espresso and a vague hope that she’d be able to find something relatively small and simple and _cheap_ remained.

That said, there was always the other option.

Alice opened the bag, grab a small handful, and weighed it out in her hand.

She didn’t remember what fifty grams felt like, but she’d weighed them out often enough for the clover that she remembered what it looked like.

Coffee, then a nap, studies said. It helped.

She didn’t have coffee, but eating beans was the next best thing, right?

They tasted bitter, as any coffee did, but she chewed and swallowed anyway. She’d never gotten used to it, too sensitive to the tannins to manage without sugar to cover it up and milk to dilute it. She grimaced, and finished, and washed down the sour aftertaste of the remaining bits and pieces with the flask of water by her bed.

Ugh.

Gross.

She lay down and tried to ignore the rocking of the wagon so she could sleep.

o.o.o.o.o

Yeti handed off the reins to his wagon half an hour after Alice disappeared, and weaved his way between the trundling wagons so he could hop up next to Olga himself.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Hello to you too,” Olga muttered.

“Hi,” Yeti said. “Seriously, though, what’s wrong with her? She basically got Lars down to normal in record time last night and now she’s just… avoiding everyone?”

“She said it was something that just happens sometimes,” Olga said. She looked back at the wagon door, as though Alice would somehow hear them through it and over the rumbling of the caravan. “It’s normal to her.”

“Has it happened before?” Yeti asked. “You live with her, don’t you…”

Olga shrugged, helpless. “Sometimes? Not this bad, I think. Usually she’s just late, and I don’t check on her. Or maybe I was just too busy to notice, or she was better at hiding it before, or she’s faking it to hide something else, or… I don’t _know_ , Yeti. I’m her friend, I _think_ , but I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this. Usually when people go a little weird in the brain here, it’s Spark stuff, and this… is the opposite.”

“Does _she_ know what’s wrong?” Yeti asked.

Olga chewed on her bottom lip. “I think so. She listed off reasons pretty quickly, when I asked, even if some of it was pretty vague. Something about, um… depression and anxiety, set off by sleep deprivation and recent stress? And after all that stuff with Lars last night, I would be _surprised_ if she didn’t know at least a few things about the details.”

“Recent stressors?” Yeti asked. “You don’t… you don’t think this is about last night? I’ve never seen her this bad after an attack.”

“Well, no, but… I mean, Chef Taki _did_ bring up the Calming Pies,” Olga said. “It’s… I mean, I don’t know if it’s the _first_ time she’s seen evidence of Sparky behavior, but…”

Yeti was quiet for a long moment, and then said, “She’s… pretty open about the fact that someone changed her body for a job, before, and maybe against her will. She’s never said she’s a construct, but…”

“But if she is, it could be a reason she doesn’t trust Sparks?” Olga asked. She shook her head. “It’s been _months_ , she has to have noticed before. She’s never brought it up, but—”

“Denial,” Yeti suggested. “If she has a preexisting distaste or fear of Sparks because she’s been on the wrong end of one before, she might have been trying to ignore or explain away the other things she saw? And last night shoved it into her face?”

“Maybe,” Olga said. She frowned ahead. “I don’t _think_ it was, but she hasn’t even _acknowledged_ that there are Sparks in the show before. I know you guys usually try to hide it for as long as possible, just in case, but this is… she’s not that oblivious, right?”

“The language barrier,” Yeti offered. “Or, well, she usually spends time with Gospodin Rassmussin, and he just drills her on dancing. That thing the other week, with André trying to figure out her music and fugueing by accident, she… she was caught up in it, but all she said was that it felt like magic, right? She must have seen Sparks fugueing before, right? If she really is a construct?”

“I…” Olga trailed off, eyes widening as she realized something. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard her so much as _mention_ Sparks. Maybe they aren’t any considered different from anyone else where she’s from? Or they’re so common that there’s no point differentiating? Or maybe… she knows a lot of psychology and said some things are common knowledge for her, maybe they’ve just figured out how to manage breakthroughs and fugueing so it’s less dangerous?”

“So she doesn’t even notice Sparky behavior as weird?” Yeti asked. He tilted his head, making a bit of a face. “Maybe. I don’t think she’s a Spark herself, at least. We’d have noticed by now, nobody can keep _that_ tight a lid on things.”

“You do it okay,” Olga said. “And Master Payne. The entire circus has managed to keep that sort of thing under wraps despite the size, before.”

“Hiding something like from a few dozen people?” Yeti asked dubiously. “Almost a dozen of them Sparks?”

“Fair point,” Olga muttered. “So you think it was definitely the Taki thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. She’s had enough time to notice things that I can’t believe she’d be _that_ surprised, right? Or… well, language barrier, and denial, and we’ve got a _lot_ of practice,” Yeti trailed off. “How long did it take you?”

“Month and a half,” Olga said. “It’s been, what, five? Something like that, for her.”

“Yeah.”

“But I already knew the language, and had my own act,” Olga added. “She’s been busy learning the language, and learning acts, and… honestly, learning how to be an adult. I’m not sure how she managed before.”

“Pretty sure she’s a city girl,” Yeti reminded her. “So my guess is that it probably has something to do with that.”

“Townies,” Olga sighed, though the joking smile dropped quicker than she’d appeared. “So she might know, and she might not. Taki sparking out visibly might have something to do with how she was acting this morning, but we can’t be sure. She’s in a terrible mood and couldn’t even force _herself_ to get up this morning, and she’s shown signs of it before but never this bad. Might be a construct, but we can’t be sure. Might not like Sparks, but we can’t be sure. Said there was a recent stress thing but we don’t know _what_.”

“Terrible situation all around,” Yeti sighed.

Olga groaned and let her head fall back. “Tell me about it.”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice didn’t wake up feeling refreshed, but she did wake up feeling… better.

A little sour that she’d wasted half the day on depression and naps, but at least that part was over with. The wagon was still, too. Lunch break, probably. She was pretty sure that it was too early for them to break for the day.

She left the wagon, rubbing at one eye, and made her way to the lunch ring.

She settled down in the empty seat next to Benjamin and let her head fall against his.

“You okay?” he asked. “You were a little shaky earlier.”

“Bad brain day,” Alice muttered. “I remember now that it might also be the winter that makes it… not bad, but… more bad?”

“Worse.”

“Yes, that one.”

“Olga said you didn’t even try to speak Romanian earlier.”

“It was too much.”

“Fair enough,” Benjamin said. He passed her a plate of… some kind of fried meat and cabbage. “Better now, though?”

“Yeah. I’m not good, but I’m… I am better,” Alice said. She took a bite. Oh, greasy. Yum. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I missed practice.”

He shrugged, jostling her. “You could barely stand. It seemed like a good reason.”

“I’m not sick. I mean, my body is not sick. It’s just my brain being stupid.”

“A mental illness is just as valid as a physical one,” he said, frowning down at her. “Why would you think otherwise?”

Alice shrugged, not entirely willing to elaborate.

They ate in silence for a bit, and Alice closed her eyes again.

“We’ll be hitting Beograd tomorrow,” Benjamin told her. “You said you were born there, right? Excited?”

“I want to be,” Alice said. “I… I _was_. I’m a little scared.”

“Because?”

Alice shrugged again. “I was born there. It means much to me. But I will recognize nothing.”

Benjamin nodded. “I can understand that.”

Alice spotted Pix.

Pix, who was staring at her, and then quickly looked down at her own meal

Alice dropped her own gaze, her insides dropping like lead.

“Alice?”

“I’m fine.”

Great, she was _great_ , she was _totally fine_ with leaving a bad impression on Pix just a few days into the other girl joining the circus. Just _peachy_ with the fact that Pix had barely interacted with her so far, and had now seen her having to take a _goddamn mental health day_ , looking like a lazy little _brat_ who was willing to make everyone else pull her weight because—

“Stop,” Benjamin said.

“What?”

“You’re making yourself angry about something,” Benjamin said. “You look like you’re getting angry at _yourself_. You’re probably hurting yourself doing that, so I’m going to tell you to stop.”

“You don’t even know what I was thinking.”

“Am I right?” he asked.

Alice couldn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe.”

“So stop,” Benjamin said. “Distract yourself.”

“With _what?”_ Alice asked. Snapped, really. She felt kind of bad about it. “Sorry, I shouldn’t—”

Benjamin got to his feet, pulling her up with him. “Are you done eating?”

“Er, yeah, but—”

“Then we’ll practice.”

And then he made her do exactly that.

They couldn’t do it for long, not really, but it was _something_ , and Alice wasn’t going to pretend that exercise-induced endorphins were useless to a fucked up brain.

She took over for Olga as wagon driver for the second half of the day, trying to let the weak sunlight do at least a little for her mood.

It worked, a little.

o.o.o.o.o

She visited Moxana that night, after practice and dinner and a few more quiet inquiries about whether she was okay.

This was ironic, she thought, considering Lars had been _much_ more noticeably distressed the night before, and they were supposed to be _used_ to that and still didn’t seem to know how to handle it. Somehow, though, they were noticing her having a bad day and… actually trying to help? It was weird.

She knocked, and upon getting the bell in answer, opened the door.

Moxana faced her, eyes open, head tilted.

Alice sat down in front of her, pulling up another prop stool. “I have a question, if you don’t mind.”

Moxana blinked at her.

“Wait, English is still okay, right?”

Moxana nodded minutely.

“Okay, great. Um… I don’t actually know if this is something you can answer, but… Benjamin never showed up in the canon that I know, I think. I like him a lot, he’s a great friend, but… was he supposed to die? In the original timeline? He’s the right age to have been… involved in the events on screen, I think, but Herr Helios was mentioned in the novel, and in a way that implied he was the only aerialist the circus had,” Alice rambled. “The novels contradicted the comic sometimes, though, and it’s possible he just left or had an injury and settled down somewhere, or… there are options. I guess. Was… _is_ he supposed to die?”

Moxana blinked at her again, and then flipped the table. The green felt board. A deck of cards.

Moxana shuffled them at lightning speed, a light crackle of electricity at her fingertips, and then held the deck out to Alice.

“Cut the deck?”

Moxana nodded. When Alice did as asked, she tapped a spot on the table, and Alice put her half of the deck down.

(There was something strange in the air. It wasn’t the electricity, probably, but there was a strange tugging in her chest that went everywhere and nowhere and at Moxana all at once.)

(Alice had come from outside of time, was powered by the Dreen, really.)

(Moxana was… a Muse. A Muse designed to see patterns so intricately that she could see past time, maybe, and the novels had suggested the Muses had come from somewhere beyond the Veil anyway, given that even Van Rijn hadn’t known what he’d done to make them.)

(Maybe Moxana’s prescience had something to do with the Dreen? Or maybe they didn’t like the Muse for meddling.)

(Maybe… maybe… _maybe…)_

Moxana pulled three cards and lay them facedown on the table.

“Okay,” Alice said. She steeled herself. “Let’s hear it.”

Moxana flipped the first.

_The Winding Path_

She flipped the second.

_The Oracle_

She flipped the third.

_The Hourglass_

Alice stared at them, trying to process the images before her. Hesitantly, she pointed at the one in the middle. “That one, the Oracle, that’s… me?”

Moxana blinked and then, slowly, nodded.

Alice looked at the other two, and… remembered the mention in the novels about spontaneous combustion in those who tried to read the deck. That said, she was supposed to be immune to death, but… ugh. There was probably something significant in the designs, but…

The Winding Path was actually a fork in the road, and the two sides _did_ wind into the distance. There was a woman there, in a dark dress, with black wings at rest. She had a jug in each hand, pouring out an orange liquid onto one path and a blue one onto the other.

The Hourglass was presented as an elderly woman seated in profile on a large tree stump, white hair pulled back severely from a black mask, holding the titular hourglass, which was almost as large as her own torso. She had her own set of speckled wings, held neatly behind her, and her back so straight that it was almost painful to look at. Behind her were ruins, dotted with weeds and other little plants in the cracks.

The first and last were connected, but _hell_ if she knew how.

“I need to learn to read tarot,” she muttered. “I only know what one card means, traditionally, and now two that you use for _people_.”

Moxana collected the cards back into the deck, made it disappear, and closed her eyes, once again in her default position.

“Thank you,” Alice said. “I’m… going to get a book, if I can find one. Ask Olga, maybe, she does this stuff for her act. Is there anything I can help you with? As a thank you?”

A flash of hands and—

The broken pawn.

“…I promise. Not yet, and I’m so sorry about that, but I _promise_ I’ll help you get your sisters back.”

 Moxana didn’t answer. She didn’t move, that Alice could see, but the pawn disappeared.

o.o.o.o.o

“Watcha got there?”

Alice looked up from her journal, and then went back to it after confirming that yes, it was Olga. “Making a… _whatever, it’s a list.”_

“Listă,” Olga told her. “It’s the same, more or less.”

Alice huffed. “I do not have the energy for too many words right now.”

“Okay,” Olga said. She sat down next to Alice. “Can I look?”

Alice shrugged and moved the book over.

> **_Books to Find:_ **
> 
> ****_\- Alice in Wonderland (English)_  
>  \- Heterodyne Novels (Romanian)  
>  \- Book of Fables (Serbian)  
>  \- History of the Shining Coalition (English)  
>  \- History of the Other War (English)  
>  \- History of the Muses (English)  
>  \- Psychology texts (English)  
>  \- Tarot, esp. Queen’s Deck (English)  
>  \- Bean There, Done That (the coffee book; English AND Romanian, compare texts to learn better)  
>  \- Textbook for learning Japanese from English; gotta get back in the groove  
>  \- Same as above but Spanish  
>  \- History of the forming of the Pax Transylvania (English)  
>  \- Geology (English)

“That’s a lot,” Olga said. “You don’t have any specific titles beyond Alice in Wonderland and the… coffee book?”

“I hope that the people who work there can help me,” Alice said.

“And that’s a lot of English.”

Alice shrugged, uncomfortable. “It is a big city, and Dame Aedith said there was… _were_ … wait, no. Are. There are a lot of bookstores. Some might have books in English.”

“Fair enough,” Olga said. “So this is a journal where you just keep notes for things? Lists and stuff?”

“Mm-hm.” Also notes on the canon, but… well. Nobody needed to see those, and quite frankly, they were in fandom code. People could probably decipher them, but she’d done her best to bury it all in confusing references, in-jokes, and comparisons to media she remembered that wouldn’t exist yet.

“What about the other two?”

Alice hesitated, and then pulled them from the shelf above her bed.

“This one is… actual stories,” she said, tapping the cover. “I try to write them in order, and finish them before I move on to the next one, because I only have one journal for this. I am… used to something different, so this is difficult for me. I would write many stories at the same time, and sometimes not finish them, before, because I would find something new to write very quickly.”

Olga nodded.

“This one is… um, _scraps_. Little things. Um.” She struggled, trying to patch together the words she just didn’t have yet. “Ideas. Plans. A line that does not have a story yet.”

“Can I see?”

Alice hesitated, and then opened it to the Disembodied Dialogue page. “These words might have a story for a home, later. Right now, they are just… ideas. _They pop into my head fully-formed, or I have an idea that’s ill-formed, and I don’t have enough to build a story around it, but I don’t want to lose the words yet, either.”_

Olga was quiet for a few moments. Her eyes skimmed over the words, mouthing them sometimes. She pointed at a handful of words and asked for a definition, and then kept reading.

Alice tried not to say anything to push her, though the need for validation was eating her alive. She wanted to think she was good. She… she’d _been_ good, before. Enough to have a few fans of her own, at least. Still, what worked in 1890s GG Romania and what worked in 2018 real-world America was going to be different, right?

“I knew you were better in English,” Olga finally said. “But when you said you’d wanted to be a writer, I didn’t really think you’d be this… practiced, I think. How much time have you put into this?”

“…ten years, maybe?” Alice shrugged. “Sometimes I did not write as much. Once, I wrote a story of over two hundred and seventeen thousand words in under three months. I was very proud of that.”

Olga stared at her, and then shook her head. “That’s… yeah, I can see that. How did you write that fast?”

“Technology.”

“Okay,” Olga said. She looked back down at the page. “Some of these are funny, but… some of them are… haunting, almost? They actually make me _want_ to read more. I don’t even know what’s going on around the rest of it, but they make me want to see the stories they come from, and you said those don’t even _exist_ yet.”

Alice shrank in on herself. “So… it’s actually good? You’re not just saying that?”

Olga nodded sharply. “If you were capable of doing this in Romanian, we’d probably be trying to find a way to monetize it. Hey, maybe if you get a few of those stories down, I can help you translate! There’s got to be some mail-order publishers willing to do business with a caravan.”

Alice nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“I’m being serious.”

Alice held her breath for a moment, and then, seeing no hint of a lie on Olga’s face, relaxed and slumped against the woman’s shoulder. “Thank you. I worry, sometimes. I worry that I am not as good as I want to be. It bothers me less with the dance, or the singing, but I have put many… much? I have put much time into my writing. It hurts to not share what I write, now. I made people happy with it, before. I made them cry, sometimes. It is nice to know that you can, um… make someone feel something, if you have the right words.”

“I can see that,” Olga said. “Do you want to share your stories with me, sometimes?”

“Sure. Only if I am there,” Alice said. She bit her tongue, just a moment, and then said, _“The journal that I use for lists is also a diary sometimes. There are things in there that I don’t want people reading.”_

“Promise,” Olga said. She patted Alice on the knee. “Hey, this is good, okay? You’re a lot better than I expected, and honestly _way_ better than those penny sparklies.”

 _“Sounds like a low bar,”_ Alice muttered. “But thank you.”

Olga knocked their shoulders together. “You gotta have a bit more confidence, girl.”

Alice shrugged. “I’m… working on it.”

“Alright, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to address a few of the Queen's Deck things next chapter, but for now all you need to know is that I really, really love winged humanoids.


	14. The Museum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BEOGRAD

_Hickory, oak, pine, and weed,_   
_Bury my heart underneath these trees._   
_And if the summer wind comes to raise my soul,_   
_Spread my spirit like a flock of crows._

Alice continued to sing under her breath, vaguely aware that she was probably getting some of it wrong, but also that she didn’t have the option of double-checking the lyrics to make sure.

“Back,” Rassmussin commanded, and Alice left her position to arch backwards, trying and failing to actually bend fully enough to grab her ankles without bending her knees, but… closer than before.

It was harder to sing like this. She mouthed the words she could remember anyway, keeping time by song.

“Relax,” Rassmussin said, and Alice stood up straight again, twisting around a little to dispel the ache in her spine. “Have you been working on the back hand spring?”

“A little?” Alice admitted. “I worry that I will, uh, hurt my hand.”

Rassmussin gestured for her to keep going.

 _“Sprain my wrist,”_ Alice clarified. “I do not know the words.”

“Hm. Sprain,” he said, and then waited for her to repeat it. “Wrist.”

She repeated it.

“You’ve learned these words before, Alice.”

“I forget things,” Alice muttered. “Words can be hard.”

“Let’s see it,” he said, gesturing to the long stretch of land he’d made sure was clear today. “We hit the city tomorrow. Won’t have time to practice.”

“Yes sir,” Alice said. _“Um, should I start with a round-off?”_

“Yes.”

“Right,” Alice said. She took a breath, bounced on her toes for a moment, and then took off at a light sprint.

Left foot, right foot, tip forward, twist, lift into the air, both legs touch down, bend, fling back, push off, lift, _oh god this is terrifying_ , hands down, _ow_ , bend elbows, push off, in the air again, touch down.

“Sloppy.”

Alice winced. “Yes, sir.”

“You hurt your wrist, didn’t you?”

“Not much,” Alice insisted. If it had been anything _really_ dangerous, she’d have fallen into the ground instead of continuing as she had. Gospodin Rassmussin didn’t know that, of course, but it was still true. “I think it is fine.”

“Let me see.”

Alice sighed and held out her hand, letting the old man bend the limb around until he’d satisfied the curiosity that something had gone wrong. “This is why you need more practice.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Again, then,” he said, stepping back. “And then we’ll work on the fouettes.”

“Yes, sir.”

She took a deep breath, eyes closed.

Open.

Sprint.

_Time to fly._

o.o.o.o.o

“You look nervous.”

“I am.”

Olga looked Alice over critically. “Can I ask why?”

“Um. I… do not remember Beograd very well,” Alice said. “I was born there, but I will not recognize most of it.”

“And that’s weird for you?” Olga guessed. “It’s really important to you, but you don’t actually know it?”

“Yes.”

“Hm,” Olga said. “Well, you’ve got friends to show you around, and you actually speak the language better than most of us. We really only picked up what we need to get around. And if you get lost… well, you can do what you did last time and find a Jäger.”

Alice stuck her tongue out at Olga. “Very funny.”

“So I was planning to go to a bar with Lars tonight, before we start doing shows tomorrow,” Olga said. “Maybe find someone for the night. You want to come with?”

“Ah, no. I wanted to find some bookstores,” Alice said. “I do not want to drink alcohol today, or find someone to, um… share a bed?”

Olga laughed a little. “Okay, then. Funny way to phrase it, but okay. I can come shopping with you, if you want? Break off after it gets dark so you can head home?”

“Yeti said he would come with me,” Alice said. “And I think Lars also said he might come? I don’t know why. He doesn’t like books much.”

“Maybe he likes you?” Olga suggested, a sneaky grin on her face.

Alice snorted. “I do not think so.”

“Why not? You’re cute, you’re nice, you—”

“Because I said no, before.”

Olga was quiet for a few long moments. _“Why?”_

Alice looked over at her, brow pinched. “Because I do not like him that way? He is a friend. That is all.”

Olga looked poleaxed.

“If you think he is a good boyfriend, then _you_ kiss him,” Alice said, lacing up her boots and determinedly refusing to meet Olga’s eyes.

“No thanks, I don’t want to tie myself down,” Olga said. “But _you_ said you would only like to date someone you already know. You and Lars get along _great_ , and you’re always hugging him, and—okay, you hug a lot of people, and I’m half-convinced it’s only because you’re cold, but—”

 _“He’s not my type,”_ Alice said, dropping the attempt at Romanian. _“And I just don’t want to. Besides, he already gets into plenty of trouble with girls in towns. I don’t want to tie_ him _down, either, or just be another in the string. We’ve got a good friendship going, and romance would make it weird.”_

“Okay,” Olga said. _“So what_ is _your type?”_

Alice stiffened.

“Can I answer that later?” She asked. “I do not… want to say, now.”

Olga’s eyebrows crawled towards her hairline. “Is there a reason?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “Olga, please.”

“Okay,” Olga said. “I… yeah, okay. But if this is one of those things that makes you cry for reasons we don’t actually know, did you at least tell _someone?”_

“Lars knows,” Alice muttered. “And Benjamin.”

Olga was quiet for a moment.

“Benjamin guessed the problem,” Alice said, desperate to fill the silence. “And Lars… _I panicked. I didn’t plan on telling him, but he knows now.”_

Olga was still quiet.

 _“I’ll tell you later,”_ Alice said quietly. _“Just. It’s a big thing.”_

“Okay,” Olga said. “I won’t press again. Let’s just go?”

Alice felt ice crawling up her spine. “Are you mad? That I will not tell you now?”

“Worried,” Olga said. “And… I’m not mad. I know you probably have good reasons. And I don’t want to _make_ you feel bad for having secrets. We all have them. I’m just confused, mostly.”

“I will tell you,” Alice promised. “Just… not now.”

o.o.o.o.o

“My hands are cold,” Alice muttered.

“Your hands are always cold,” Lars pointed out. “Did you bring mittens?”

“Yes, and my hands are in my coat pockets,” Alice said.

“Do you actually want help or are you just complaining to complain?” Olga asked. “Because you _did_ say you like to complain for the sake of it sometimes.”

“Complaining to complain,” Alice said. “Also complaining that I can see nothing. There are too many tall people here. I knew this before I came, but I will still complain. It is more crowded than I thought, too.”

“Is there anything you _don’t_ feel like complaining about?” Lars asked. There was a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

“My shoes are nice,” Alice declared. “Very comfy.”

“Glad to hear it,” Yeti said. “But if you’re still upset about not being able to see things, I can carry you.”

Alice looked at him, eyes narrowed. “…on your shoulders?”

“Yeah.”

“…I would feel like a child,” she admitted. “But I want to.”

Yeti held out a hand. “Offer’s open.”

She hesitated a moment longer, and then nodded. “Okay. Thank you. How do you want me to get up?”

“Just step on my hand, and I’ll lift you.”

“But then your hand will be dirty.”

“I’m not doing anything soon that requires clean hands, Alice,” Yeti said, voice just a little flat. “If we all grab lunch, I can wash them. If not, I don’t care.”

Alice hesitated anyway, and then sighed and planted one foot on Yeti’s hand, stabilizing herself on his shoulder as he lifted her up. She wobbled for a moment after she sat down, and he grabbed onto her ankles to keep her stable. She tucked her hands back into her pockets. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Yeti said. “See everything from up there?”

“I do,” Alice said. She had the urge to lean back and hover, Yeti’s hands keeping her legs in place as leverage… and ignored it, because it would be kind of stupid and probably rude. “Did you have something in mind to do today?”

“You wanted to look at bookstores, right?” Olga asked.

“Yes, but I am sure you have things you want to do, too,” Alice said. “And I can shop later, probably.”

“Wasn’t there also something about finding a church?” Lars asked.

“I can do that by myself,” Alice said. “Or, um, I want to do that by myself.”

“Fair enough, religion can be weird,” Yeti said. “What are you looking for? St. Sava? A different saint? Or maybe something like the Fatalists?”

“Fatalists?” Alice asked.

“Oh yeah, they’ve got a big cathedral here, don’t they?” Olga mused. “They’re a bit niche, and if you don’t know what they are, you’re probably better off avoiding them. They don’t try to convert people or anything, but they’ll answer questions if you ask, and I just get a headache listening to them talk. Let’s see, other uncommon stuff… there’s at least one temple for people who still follow the Greek Pantheon, but they’ve been struggling, so it might be closed down if they didn’t start angling on the tourism. There’s the Mirror Cult in Zvezdara, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster guys.”

Alice choked on thin air.

“Oh, you’ve heard of them? Yeah, they’re weird.” Olga waved it off. “There’s a Satanist group somewhere, I’m not sure where, and I think there was a Christian sect of… probably Orthodox, just statistically, that tried to canonize Tesla himself before he told them to knock it off.”

“Didn’t he send the pigeon cops?” Lars asked.

“He _definitely_ sent the pigeon cops,” Olga said. “I think… hm, for more standard stuff, there’s a Catholic church a kilometer or two east of where we are? I think they’re under the Ottoman Pope, but I’m _pretty_ sure they’re one of the ones that don’t care which Pope you follow as long as you believe in God or whatever, so it doesn’t matter much. And I think there’s a synagogue near Knez Mihailova.”

“There’s Bajrakli Mosque in Zerek, a Buddhist temple a few minutes away from the Kalemegdan, and I think Mechanicsburg sent a few people here a while back to set up something regarding the Dyne goddess?” Yeti rattled off. “Beyond that… mostly Orthodox Christian stuff, but if you’ve got something specific in mind, you can probably find it just by asking around. It’s a big city, so you’ll find most things.”

“A church of Sveti Sava is fine,” Alice said quietly. “I think I did not understand much of what you said. The words are not the same as what I know.”

“…I forgot about that,” Olga admitted. “Um.”

“I’ll translate,” Yeti offered. “I remember most of what we said.”

“Awesome,” Lars said brightly. “Because I definitely can’t.”

Olga laughed and elbowed him in the ribs.

Alice listened as Yeti translated for her, answering questions when she poked for more information.

“Anything else?” Yeti asked at the end. “You said it’s your first time here in a while, right? We’ve all seen most of the big stuff on previous trips.”

“Um… _museums?”_ Alice hazarded. “I do not know the word in Romanian.”

“Muzeu,” Yeti said, laughing when Alice groaned. “It’s easy for you to remember, at least! Science, history, or art?”

 _“If there isn’t anything that covers all three, then history, I think,”_ Alice said.

“There’s the Museum of Unnatural History,” Olga offered. “History, focusing on unexplained phenomena and sparky stuff.”

Alice tilted her head. “Huh. That sounds… really interesting, actually.”

“Yeah?” Olga asked. She grinned, a little too wide. “You said you like the places where magic and science meet when you write, yeah? This is basically that.”

“Yeah, that works,” Alice decided. “And since we’re in Beograd, I can probably read the signs. Slowly, but… yeah. Okay. I’ll do that.”

“We can go now if you want,” Yeti said. “I’ve been meaning to go anyway. I didn’t have a chance last year, and I hear they have a Cambodian Gravity Well this year, got it on loan from the University of Phnom Penh. _And_ they got some Infinity Feathers on display, and an entire wing on Heterodyne battle monsters from the past three centuries.”

“Do you know when it closes?” Lars asked.

“Five, usually,” Yeti said. “You don’t have to come. I know you’re not big on this.”

“Mind putting off the bookstores for a few days?” Olga asked, craning her head back to look at Alice. “Or do the museum later?”

“I like the museum idea,” Alice said. “If that is okay? Yeti is right, you do not need to come if you will be bored.”

“Are you the kind of person to get distracted by things like this, almost staying after hours because you got too caught up in reading everything to notice the building was closing?” Lars asked.

“Um,” Alice said. She remembered multiple museum trips that had gone that way, and even getting distracted by signs advertising the possibly-fictional history of a map of ruins in her brother’s Call of Duty game, getting herself banned from playing with him because she’d been too busy trying to read everything to actually play. “Yes.”

“Then I’m coming along to make sure you don’t all get too distracted,” Lars said. “And maybe to keep you from doing something stupid.”

“Me too,” Olga said.

“Bucharest, just over a year ago, they had that Delphic Cleromancy Set on loan from Athens and you _tried to ask if you could do a reading_ ,” Lars stressed. “I don’t trust _you_ to make good decisions either.”

Olga opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it with a click. “Okay, that’s… yes. I did do that.”

“What did she do?” Alice asked. “What is, um…”

“Fortunes from bones,” Olga said. “They had a _Delphic Set_. Those are _ridiculously accurate_.”

“And also liable to give you horrific hallucinations for up to a week afterwards,” Lars said. “So it was a _bad idea.”_

Alice giggled.

“Right, so, Lars is coming to keep us all from doing something stupid,” Yeti said brightly. “Because his only mistakes are from getting too friendly with local girls.”

“I’m not even going to argue,” Lars said. “Just try not to do anything too ridiculous.”

o.o.o.o.o

“So,” Lars said. “What did we learn today?”

“Read the sign before you look at the Infinity Feathers?” Alice said. “Because you are not supposed to look too close. Your head will spin and there are stars and then it hurts when someone pulls you away.”

“Right,” Lars said. “You get kind of a pass because you said your reading skills aren’t great for Cyrillic, and your Romanian is still shaky enough that I can imagine why you’d want to look before you read.”

Alice didn’t admit that she’d subconsciously assumed it was a ‘No Flash Photography’ warning, forgetting that cameras weren’t common enough for that to be a worry yet.

“Yeti?”

“Don’t ignore the signs to try to get closer to the gravity well to see how it works?” Yeti offered. He had a hand pressing ice to his head. “Mostly because they’ll have to send someone to turn it _off_ to get you away again.”

“You don’t get an excuse,” Lars said. “Olga.”

“Hi.”

_“Olga.”_

“Yeah, yeah, don’t hit on the security guards,” Olga said, rolling her eyes. “How was I supposed to know he was married?”

“He was wearing a wedding ring.”

“So do you, sometimes.”

Lars buried his face in his hands. “You’re all terrible.”

“At least I’ve never gotten arrested for sleeping with the mayor’s niece,” Olga said

“That’s… a fair point but also _no,”_ Lars said. He did not lift his face out of his hands.

“Do you need a hug?” Alice asked. “You look like you need a hug.”

“Yes, please.”

Alice got off the steps to the museum entrance and gave Lars a hug. “At least we did not get, um, ordered to leave.”

“She’s right, we didn’t get kicked out,” Olga said. “Or even politely asked to leave. Or escorted. Or banned.”

“I think they’re used to worse,” Yeti said. “I heard one of the guards saying that someone tried to _steal_ the gravity well last week. And one of the guards at the Infinity exhibit was apparently used to pulling people away. He told me it happened at least twenty times a day.”

“At least it is normal,” Alice sighed. “It must make it hard to learn about them.”

“I think there are special goggles, actually?” Yeti mused. “Or something. They’re used to worse, anyway.”

Alice shrugged, which was a little awkward, since she was still hugging Lars.

“You can let go now,” Lars said. “I’m done grieving your collective lack of sense.”

“You’ll have to do it again eventually,” Yeti reminded him with a grin. “So, you two headed for a bar or something?”

“Definitely,” Olga confirmed. “Feel like joining us?”

Yeti looked at Alice, hesitating.

“I can ask for directions,” Alice assured him. “I won’t get _that_ lost.”

“You sure?” Lars asked.

“I don’t need someone to walk me back,” Alice said flatly. “I speak Serbian. I can ask if I need help. Go have fun.”

“It’s… not that,” Yeti said. “It’s just—”

“You can go without me, Yeti! I will be fine.”

_“Hyu seem verra sure about dot!”_

Alice froze, and then spun around. Her eyes landed on the blue fur and rabbit ears and purple hair and—“Dinreel!”

_“Eenglish again, or mebbe hyu vant to practice hyu Romanian?”_

_“Not with that accent, I’m afraid,”_ Alice said. _“I’m still working on just understanding the language, let alone accents that strong.”_

 _“Iz verra fair,_ ” Dinreel said. She came closer, seemingly unaware of the fact that the other three were tensing up. _“Iz hyu haffeenk trouble finding hyu vay around?”_

 _“I get lost easily,”_ Alice said. _“Which, uh, I’m pretty sure you already knew that, but in case you didn’t, I’m utterly terrible at directions and could get lost if someone gave me an interactive map that told me the directions out loud.”_

 _“Sounds like hyu’ve had dot experience,”_ Dinreel said.

Alice didn’t answer.

Dinreel’s smile widened past what was humanly possible. “If hyu circus kids iz hokay mit it, Hy ken valk hyu leedle dancer beck to de circus.”

“I would be happy with that,” Alice said carefully. The others looked unsure.

“She’s the one that walked you back before, in Sofia?” Olga asked.

“Yes,” Alice said. She noticed Lars give a start, staring at Dinreel for a long moment, and then at Alice.

He smiled, tilted his head, and lifted one brow.

 _Oh god no_.

Yeti relaxed a little at Olga’s question and the answer it got.

 _“Gorl like Mizz Nixy hez friends mit de Jägerkin,”_ Dinreel said, once again switching to English, presumably for Alice’s sake. _“Und fans! A few of de boyz vot saw her in Sofia voz verra impressed.”_

 _“You’re exaggerating,”_ Alice muttered. _“But thanks.”_

 _“Eez not an egg-za-je-ray-shun,”_ Dinreel said, _sotto voce._

Alice bit her lip, trying to stifle her smile, and looked at the ground.

“Okay then,” Olga said. “You’ve been good to her before, so I guess I’ll trust you with her again.”

“I can make my own choices,” Alice said. “I am an adult. I am older than Yeti, even.”

“Barely,” Yeti reminded her.

Alice shrugged. “Still. I am an adult.”

“Sure thing!” Lars said, slipping an arm through both Olga and Yeti’s, getting himself some startled shouts in return. “Get home safe, have a nice conversation, all that fun stuff. Don’t get distracted by some feathers again.”

Alice spluttered as Lars steered the other two away, and then dropped and closed her eyes and pressed her face into her hands, whining a little. She didn’t bother with Romanian. “Oh my _god_.”

Dinreel didn’t bother with Romanian either. “Hy am theenking dot boy knows sometheeng.”

“He knows I like girls,” Alice said, lifting her head. Dinreel patted her on the shoulder. “I think he’s trying to wingman for me.”

“Wingman?”

“Like… helping a friend get a date,” Alice said. “Or at least get into the good graces of someone they’re interested in.”

“Ah,” Dinreel said. “So hyu friend theenks hyu vant to be een my good graces?”

Alice shrugged. “I mean, I kinda thought I already was?”

Dinreel grinned at her and offered an arm. “Hyu iz right about dot!”

o.o.o.o.o

“Okay,” Olga said, grabbing her drink and settling between Lars and Yeti on the torn leather couch in the corner of the bar. “I have a question.”

“Hm?” Lars prompted.

“Wait, no, two questions,” Olga corrected. “I was going to ask Yeti, but I changed my mind. Lars. First of all, you seemed _really_ eager to get us out of there. What do you know?”

Lars froze.

Olga narrowed her eyes. _The man knew something._

“Alice talked about how she knows the Jägers and they know something about her before, right?” Lars offered. “She said that… um… they could smell something about what her previous employers did to her.”

Olga winced. Yeah. She remembered that. Going by the look on Yeti’s face, he hadn’t forgotten either.

(It was an open secret in the circus, at this point. Alice had quietly admitted to this every time someone had asked why the Jägers had taken interest in her, and refused to elaborate.)

(There was a reason everyone thought there was a good chance she was a construct, after all.)

“And I remember she spoke with that exact Jäger back in Sofia,” Lars said. “I figure that if she came back, they probably have something important to talk about.”

“Hm…” Olga tapped her chin, frowning at Lars. “Fine. I’ll accept that. So! Yeti.”

She clapped and turned to the larger man, who leaned comically away from her. It was probably because Olga was grinning her favorite ‘I’m going to get information out of you and there’s very little you can do about it’ grin.

(She’d stop if someone was actually uncomfortable, but she’d had more than enough time to learn Yeti’s tells.)

“You know as well as I do that in a city this big, where she knows the language, Alice isn’t going to get lost,” Olga said. “Or at least, not so lost that she can’t get directions back to the circus, so you didn’t have to be that worried about her. What gives?”

“It’s a big city, and it can be dangerous for a young woman alone,” Yeti said. “Especially one without combat training, and who’s considered ‘low class’ enough to go missing without word.”

“Pigeon cops,” Olga argued.

Lars leaned around Olga and nodded. “They have laser eyes, Yeti.”

“Seriously, you know nobody breaks the big laws here,” Olga said, swinging sideways to toss her legs over Yeti’s lap. He rolled his eyes at her. “Because if you break a big law, you get pigeon lasered.”

“Okay, Olga,” Yeti said, patting her knees. “You’re right about the pigeon cops.”

“So, what were you thinking?!” Olga demanded. “You know she hates it when someone implies she’s stupid or incompetent, why would you keep pressing?”

Yeti dragged a hand down his face. “It’s stupid.”

“Try me,” Lars said, hooking his chin over Olga’s shoulder.

Yeti looked at the ceiling like he was hoping the answer would be written there. It wasn’t. The ceiling was mostly woodworm and flaky blue paint. Olga had been eyeing it uneasily since they’d entered the building. Olga poked him in the shoulder.

“I wasn’t thinking that she was incapable,” Yeti finally said. “I just… was trying to figure out if there was a good way to ask her to go to one of the cafés with me. She likes coffee, right?”

“Kinda,” Olga said, wiggling her hand in a sign of approximation. “She used to sell it, but it’s usually too bitter for her. She likes café au lait, almond or soy if she can get it. But yeah, she likes coffee shops. Why were you being weird about it?”

Yeti gave her a flat look. “Cute friend that I get along with, probably a construct so she probably doesn’t have any anti-construct sentiments, similar in age, probably not scared of sparks after as long as she’s been in the circus, and she’s not too well-read on science but she got excited about things at the museum today and was more than willing to let me translate or even talk about my own ideas. Take a guess.”

Olga gasped, delighted. “Oh my goodness, do you have a _crush?!”_

Yeti groaned, throwing his head back, just barely stopping before he hit the wall. “That’s a strong word for it.”

“Um,” Lars said, ever so eloquent.

“You do!”

“It’s not a crush, it’s just…” Yeti gestured vaguely with one hand. “An idea I’ve been having. We’re already good friends, it’s just an option.”

“I think it’s adorable,” Olga decided.

 _“Um,”_ Lars said.

Olga turned to look at him. “What’s wrong with _you?”_

“I just… don’t think that’s a great idea?” Lars offered.

“Are you just annoyed because she already turned you down?” Olga asked. Ugh, boys were _dumb._ “She just told me you aren’t her type, maybe Yeti is!”

“That’s not… I mean…” Lars looked vaguely panicky, if not the kind of panicky that led to screaming and hyperventilation. “I just know things she’s said, to me, and it’s just… not the best idea.”

“…anti-construct stuff?” Yeti hazarded.

“No,” Lars said immediately. “Definitely not that. Just. If nothing else she’s probably not in the best mental place for a relationship, right? Especially after what we saw the other day?”

“In that case a relationship could be a bright spot that helps!” Olga argued.

“Or something that makes her feel uncomfortable and guilty for not being able to provide the same emotional support and stability her partner can,” Lars retorted. He shrugged when Olga and Yeti stared at him. “What? It’s exactly the sort of thing she worries about and you’ve heard it, same as me.”

“Lars, you’re a buzzkill,” Olga decided. “If she rejected you, she’s not scared of saying no to boys, even friends. Maybe especially friends. The worst she can do is say no, so I think Yeti should go for it.”

“Do I get a say?” Yeti asked, with far more than just a touch of sarcasm.

“Might just make her uncomfortable instead,” Lars offered weakly. “I just… I want to be supportive, but I just don’t think it’s a great idea right now. She’s in a bad place, mentally, and this would just add pressure.”

“It’s just coffee,” Olga argued. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

o.o.o.o.o

“Und Jenka vill be comink by soon,” Dinreel said, just as they got to the edge of the park that the circus was set up in. “Hy theenk she hez information for hyu.”

Alice tucked her hair behind her ear, considering that. “Okay. Um… what kind of information?”

“Past Dreen Gifts,” Dinreel said. “De verra old vuns, and de vuns vot iz a leedle newer, too. Jenka knows _lotz_ about dem.”

“Okay,” Alice said, nodding slowly. “That could be helpful. Learn about the limits of my predecessors and all that.”

“Ve theenk dere are more den vat iz known,” Dinreel said. “More in de last few decades den before.”

“I can guess why.”

“Hyu ken?” Dinreel asked. “Iz it de Odder?”

Alice shook her head. “I can’t answer that.”

“Haaa, iz fair. Hyu gotz lots of eenfawmation vot hyu’ve got to keep secret,” Dinreel mused. “Ve know about two dot most don’t, hy theenk.”

“Nicki and Maxie,” Alice said quietly.

“…yez,” Dinreel confirmed. “Iz dem. Hyu mentioned leedle Maxie before.”

“They showed me,” Alice said. “Before they added me to the world, they showed me all the frozen Gifts. Every last one.”

Dinreel said nothing, but her hand drifted into Alice’s and squeezed.

“I didn’t get details, mostly,” Alice said. “Um. I just—”

“Hyu ken stop if hyu vant,” Dinreel said. “Hyu iz hurteeng to talk about eet.”

Alice closed her eyes and nodded sharply. “Just—just give me a moment. Um.”

She breathed, quick and a little jagged.

Dinreel herded her out of the street and against a wall, still holding one hand. “Hy’m sorry, Hy deedn’t theenk—”

“It’s fine, you didn’t know it would do this,” Alice said. “Sorry, shouldn’t have interrupted, I’m just—sorry. Give me a moment.”

It took more than a moment to regain her composure, but at least she didn’t cry. That was a plus.

“Hyu vant ve keep headink for de circus?” Dinreel asked, after Alice had composed herself.

“Yeah,” Alice said, pushing away from the wall. “So, how’s, um, Filly?”

“She eez hibernateeng for de Vinter,” Dinreel said. “Near Mechanicsburg, vere some of de brodders ken keep an eye on her.”

“So you made your way from Mechanicsburg to Sofia just to see the other Jägerkin?” Alice asked.

“Hy dun get to talk mit some of dem verra often,” Dinreel said. “Haz been a verra long time since I saw Andris, for vun theeng. Twelve years.”

Alice winced. “Yeah, and you don’t have a lot of long-distance communication options, either.”

Dinreel shook her head. “Sofia vas a lucky coincidence. Hy got to see dem, _and_ Hy got to meet a verra cute dancer gorl.”

Alice opened her mouth, closed it, and looked away, trying to stifle the smile. Was she blushing? She was probably blushing. “That’s very kind of you.”

“Iz true! And Hy’m theenking dot mebbe Hy ken see dot circus gorl a leedle more before Hy need to go beck to Filly, hoy?” Dinreel looked at Alice sideways with a slight smile.

Alice bit her lip and ducked her head. “I think I’d like that. You’re fun to talk to, and I don’t have to keep as many secrets.”

“Hyu gots more people to talk to?” Dinreel asked.

“Some. I have… one person I can say most things to. Nobody else knows that I am what I am, though, and I’m hoping they won’t, either. Two people know about the whole… homosexuality bit, and pretty much everyone knows I’m a little messed up in the head,” Alice said. “So… some things.”

“Hyu look sad.”

“I’m… yeah. One of the guys that I told about liking girls is… he’s my partner for some work stuff, and he’s helping me learn silks. He’s also… I’m worried he’s going to die before canon hits.”

“Iz a big vorry?”

“If I knew what the cards meant, I’d be more sure, but…” Alice shook her head. “He’s not present in canon, even… sorry, can’t say that part yet. Point is, I think he’d probably be in canon, but he isn’t, and the Wastelands are a dangerous place.”

“Hy ken understand dot,” Dinreel said. “Hyu vant me to try to help? Haveeng a Jäger to fight off de dangers does lots of goot theengs.”

“I can’t ask you to waste that much time on me,” Alice said. “You’ve got a job, one that doesn’t involve me.”

“Hoy, dot’s vhere hyu iz wrong,” Dinreel said. “Hyu said ve iz goink to get a Heterodyne. Hyu iz a Dreen Gift, vhich means hyu iz important, and hyu _likes_ de Heterodyne and de Jägerkin. Keepink hyu alive is verra important. Keepink hyu happy iz, too.”

Alice felt her chest twist, in a complicated way that wasn’t really good or bad or anything, but was probably going to _turn_ bad if she thought about it too long. “Oh. That’s… good, I guess.”

Dinreel peered at her. “Hyu know dot iz not de only reason Hy am talkink mit hyu, yez? Helpink hyu iz not a problem mit my job, dot’s vot I’m tryink to say. If dot vos de only reason, Hy could stay hidden and be all schneaky, but Hy dun vant to do dot. Hy vant to talk to de pretty gorl.”

Alice ducked her head again. “Okay. Sorry, I just—I get insecure. Yeah. That’s probably the best way to put it.”

“Hy ken tell,” Dinreel said. She bumped Alice with her elbow, lightly enough that Alice could tell how careful she was being. “But hyu got _lots_ of theengs about hyu vot a gorl like me could like, hm?”

Alice scratched at the back of her neck. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dinreel brought Alice’s hand up to her mouth and planted a kiss on her knuckles, and then grinned that too-wide, too-toothy grin when Alice blushed. “Hyu vant me to take hyu to hyu wagon? Or chust to de edge of de camp?”

“Just the edge of camp, please,” Alice said. “I don’t want too many questions about, um…”

“Sappho.”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “…yeah.”

“Iz hokay,” Dinreel said. She stopped at the edge of the park that the circus had set up in, and then stepped back and bowed with a slightly ridiculous flourish of her hat. “Until de next time, Mizz Nixy.”

Alice giggled, and curtseyed back. “Until then, Miss Dinreel.”

She waved goodbye, stayed in place for a few seconds, and then shook her head with a smile and headed for Olga’s wagon.

Tomorrow was a big day, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lars doesn't want to out someone but also. _Awkward._


	15. The Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Olga makes plans, Alice nets herself a book, Yeti is confused, Benjamin is tired, Lars is panicking, and Dinreel's got game.

“I don’t know what to do!” Lars whispered.

Benjamin eyed him, unimpressed. “You normally gossip with those two, then?’

“It wasn’t gossip!” Lars cried, letting his head fall back against the wagon wall. It wasn’t like they could have this conversation in the open, after all. “It was Yeti talking about his own personal feelings, and Olga and I trying to give advice, except I know and they don’t, and it’s not like I can _tell_ them!”

“Well, at least you know that much,” Benjamin said. He was sitting against the wall, arms crossed, and seemed largely unimpressed with Lars’s pain. “You’re really dramatic, you know that?”

“Leading man’s got to have some flair,” Lars said. “I’m serious, though, what do I _do?”_

“Ignore it?” Benjamin offered.

“Won’t that make _her_ uncomfortable, though?” Lars asked. “I mean, I’m one thing, it’s easy to reject a guy who meets a new girl every week, but Yeti’s actually got _feelings_.”

“Ah, right,” Benjamin said, tilting his head. “So you’re worried about her feeling pressured and guilty.”

“Yeah,” Lars said. “And she’s…”

Benjamin gestured for him to continue.

“Delicate?” Lars offered hesitantly. “In a different way from me.”

“…that’s certainly one way to put it,” Benjamin allowed.

“So obviously, the best way for this to go would be for Yeti to find out before he asks her anything,” Lars rambled. “Because then she doesn’t feel pressured or set off one of those spells where we all get really worried because she makes comments about feeling empty and useless, and Yeti doesn’t feel bad because he thinks I’m discouraging him because of something about anti-construct sentiment, and—”

“You’re allowed to breathe, you know,” Benjamin said flatly. “It’s not banned.”

 Lars groaned, letting his head fall back again. “It’s a complicated situation, Benji.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Ben?”

“Just use my name,” Benjamin said. “Why don’t you just tell Alice? Explain what’s going on, that you think Yeti, and probably Olga, would accept what’s going on, and skip everything.”

“Yeti asked me not to tell her,” Lars said.

“And you can’t just tell her that you think it’s a good idea and ask her to _trust_ you that there’s a reason?” Benjamin asked.

Lars gave him a look that was strangely and uncomfortably reminiscent of a wounded dog.

“She’s a grown woman, Lars,” Benjamin told him. “This happens to everyone at some point, and she handled it well enough with you.”

“She barely knew me!” Lars protested. “Please, you know this, uh… _stuff_ better than I do?”

Benjamin eyed him, still unimpressed.

Lars grinned hopefully.

 “…I’ll see what I can do to distract Yeti from this,” Benjamin muttered. “But you owe me.”

“Sure thing!” Lars said, voice bright. “…what do I owe you?”

“I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

o.o.o.o.o

The show on the first full day in Beograd went well.

Alice got to mingle with the crowd afterwards with minimal awkwardness. It was cold, definitely, but she hadn’t forgone Organza’s gloves this time, and everything she was wearing was built to trap warmth these days.

She got to play the clank-girl role again, and ignored the wistful looks the Circus members kept giving her. She’d have time to feel guilty about bringing those memories back later.

Tomorrow would give her a few free hours in the morning, and then work in the afternoon. Right now, she needed a shower and some sleep.

“Hey!”

Alice froze for a moment, and then turned around to give Pix an uneasy smile. “Hi.”

Pix was still in the Lucrezia outfit that she’d been clipped into towards the end of the show, the need for a quick change beating out any thoughts of being properly sewn into the dress. She looked… annoyed, maybe? It was hard to tell under all the stage makeup.

“We haven’t really gotten a chance to talk,” Pix said. She looked Alice up and down, and then stuck out a hand. “I’m Pix.”

“…Alice,” she said, taking the proffered hand and shaking it. “You did well tonight. The crowd seemed to enjoy it.”

Pix lifted an eyebrow, planting her hands on her hips. “And you didn’t?”

“I am… not good at hearing things from far away,” Alice said. “And I still have trouble with many words. I only started to learn Romanian, um… six? Or seven? Months ago.”

Pix wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t that when you joined the circus?”

“Yes.”

This seemed to surprise her, or was at least confusing enough for a brow wrinkle. “So you only started learning Romanian when you joined the circus. You didn’t… need it wherever you were before?”

Alice shrugged. “It was not a language I heard much. I did not need it.”

“I know Romanian best, but I’ve been in this area long enough that I know Serbian almost as well,” Pix said. “I picked up some French, and Russian, and Arabic, too.”

“Smart,” Alice said.

“And English, obviously,” Pix said. “Hard to trade without it, sometimes.”

“Trade?” Alice asked. “You did that a lot?”

“Well… sort of,” Pix said. She waved it off. “Anyway, you did good too, tonight. Is that your only act? The dancing?”

Alice shifted her weight. “For now. I am practicing with Benjamin to join him on the aerial silks. Herr Helios is teaching me, but Benjamin helps more because he is my age.”

“You like him?” Pix asked.

“He is a good friend,” Alice said. “Um. Why did you want to talk to me?”

“You’re the newest except for me,” Pix said. “I figured it would be helpful to find out if you had any… thoughts on how to integrate more smoothly?”

Alice blinked at her. “I… integrate?”

Pix stared at her. “…you don’t know that word, do you?”

“I learn languages very slow,” Alice said. “Um. Slowly.”

“Right,” Pix said. “I’ll just… talk to you later, then.”

Alice stared as Pix left, still trying to work through the conversation. Pix was noted in canon to be self-absorbed. That was a whole _thing_. Alice was already forgetting the word that she hadn’t known, which certainly wasn’t going to help her ask someone for a definition later, and she didn’t even know what the point of the conversation had been in the first place.

Oh, and Pix had left right after Alice ran into a problem, so that either meant short patience, which was probably true, or just that she considered Alice too frustratingly dim to put up with by standard, which… was also probably true.

What the _hell_.

o.o.o.o.o

Breakfasted started and ended early, and Lars was proud to note that he’d spent most of it telling Abner a story that had him laughing hard enough to force milk out of his nose.

Lars’s good mood had lasted through most of cleanup and everyone preparing to go have fun in town before it was time to work again. Then he’d seen Yeti moving out of the corner of his eye, heading towards Alice, and immediately cursed internally. Olga was standing off to the side, looking excited and like she was anticipating something great, and Lars cursed a little more. He stood up, started moving to intercept, probably for the third time in as many days, and—

“Hoy! Mizz Nixy!”

Or that. That worked too.

“Dinreel!” Alice exclaimed, sounding… delighted, actually. She _looked_ happy, too.

She was also speaking English now, which meant Lars had no idea what was going on. Yeti had paused, though, looking a little like he didn’t know how to handle this situation, and… okay, Lars felt bad for him, he really did, but he also _definitely_ hadn’t planned this and was going to count his blessings that he could stall a little longer.

Alice shouted something over to the nearest person, who did in fact happen to be a very unsure Yeti, and then left with the Jäger woman. Dinreel, her name was Dinreel, Lars was probably better off putting some memory into that, _anyway_ , she tossed a wave and a grin over her shoulder as she walked off with Alice. A few people waved back, most of them looking just as confused and contemplative as… well, as Lars did. He was pretty sure this wasn’t just an interest in construct girls, given everything Alice had said, but he probably had less of a chance of figuring it out than the sparks in the company did.

“What is _up_ with her?” Pix muttered quietly, just barely on the edge of hearing. “Does she normally go places with wild Jägers?”

“This is the third time I’ve seen her with Dinreel,” Lars said. “I think it’s safe to say they’re friends.”

Pix looked bewildered, which was… fair. Probably more fair than Lars wanted to admit, really. Wild Jägers had a reputation for a reason, after all.

He ignored that and jogged over to Yeti. “Hey, what happened? What did she say?”

“Just that Dinreel had something to show her and that she’d be back in time for the show,” Yeti said. He frowned a little hard. “She’s definitely okay, right?”

“I think she’ll be fine,” Lars said. “I mean, there’s a pattern, right? This specific Jäger has brought her back safe at least twice. That’s got to mean something.”

“…right.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Oh my god he’s huge,” Alice breathed out.

Füst loomed over her, Jenka sprawled facedown on his back.

Alice didn’t feel fear of physical things as much as she used to, but there was still a visceral reaction to the sheer _size_ here.

“Eef Jenka vaz in de story hyu know, den so vas Füst, ya?” Dinreel asked.

“Mm-hm,” Alice said, keeping her eyes on the massive Jägerbear.

“Hyu vant to pet heez noze?” Jenka asked, sliding down a little closer as Füst lowered his head and snuffled a little.

“Um,” Alice said, eloquent to the last. “He wouldn’t mind, would he?”

“Of cawse nawt,” Jenka drawled.

Dinreel stepped up behind Alice, hands on her shoulders, and gently guided her a little closer. “Eez hokay, he von’t bite eef Jenka tells heem to be nize to de pretty gorl.”

“Flatterer,” Alice said, almost on reflex. She put out one hand, trembling, and shivered as she made contact.

“Hyu izn’t verra used to animals, iz hyu?” Dinreel asked.

“Nope.”

She tried petting him instead of just awkwardly resting her hand there. Bear fur was… weird.

“Hyu vant to take a ride on heem?” Jenka asked.

Alice immediately backpedaled away. “Nope! No, maybe later, right now I’m not gonna… bear.”

“Bear?” Jenka asked.

“I do enough freaking out trying to ride a horse,” Alice said. “I’m not gonna risk that here with something even bigger and scarier.”

Jenka laughed and slid down to the ground, patting Füst before she came closer. “Iz hokay. Hyu ever vant to take a ride, hyu chust tell Dinreel. Hy am verra sure she vould be _happy_ to tell me, und maybe take a ride herself.”

Alice felt the warm hands on her shoulders and nodded sharply. “Right. Um. Okay, yeah, you wanted to see me for some reason?”

Jenka was still wearing a cloth over half her face, so the change to her expression was subtle, but a change there was. She pulled around a messenger bag, rough leather and brass, and pulled out a book.

“ _A History of Dreen-Gifts_ ,” Jenka said, passing it over. Alice took it, flipping it around to take a closer look. It was actually leather-bound, and she shivered at the thought of how expensive it had to be. Not cheap, definitely, and she didn’t expect she’d be able to keep it. “Iz… no, Hy ken’t risk misunderstandinks here. It is one of the most comprehensive histories available right now, and there is a list of reference materials if you need them. The copy I brought is in English, and I have an omnibus of Lady Timothea’s journals with me as well.”

“Lady Timothea?” Alice asked. “I don’t… think I’ve heard of her.”

“Not a lot of time to research, I imagine,” Jenka said. “Or access, perhaps?”

“The latter, mostly,” Alice said. She looked down at the book. “Written by… Inna… Maximenko?”

“A pseudonym,” Jenka said. She did not blush or look away, when Alice looked up, but held her gaze steadily.

“Ho yez, our Jenka iz vun of de schmottest in de whole of Jägerkin!” Dinreel crowed, hopping behind Jenka and pushing her cheeks up into a grin. Füst growled. “She iz even writink de textbooks!”

Alice looked down at the book again, then up at Jenka, who was elbowing Dinreel away from herself. “Did… sorry, but did you lose a bet?”

Jenka blinked at her. “Hm?”

“It’s just…” Alice looked down at the book again, hesitant. “I mean, it… _does_ seem like, if you wrote this book, like Dinreel is implying, and used a pseudonym… then _Maximenko_ sounds a lot like something Maxim would do if you lost a bet to him, and you do… hang out a lot in canon, and…”

“Hang out?” Dinreel asked.

“Spend time with,” Jenka said. She turned to Alice. “Jason used to use that phrase quite a bit, you know.”

“Jason?”

“Another prior Dreen Gift,” Jenka said. “I imagine you’ll be learning about quite a few in there.”

“…right,” Alice said. “So… did you lose a bet, then?”

“She deed,” Dinreel confirmed. “It voz _verra_ funny.”

Alice smiled and looked down at the book again. “Okay. Good to know. Thank you, Jenka. Um, how long can I keep this?”

“Iz for hyu to keep,” Jenka said, dropping the odd, old-fashioned received pronunciation like she’d never put it on in the first place. She pulled another book out of her bag and put it on top of the one already in Alice’s hands. “De journals, too. Hyu iz a Dreen-Gift vot likes de next Heterodyne. Eef de book ken help, den hyu ken have it.”

“Uh… okay,” Alice said. She ducked her head. “Thank you. Again.”

She bit her lip to keep herself from continuing to stumble her way through a sentence and raised her head again. “I… yeah.”

“Hyu iz verra cute,” Jenka said, reaching out and patting Alice on the head. Alice squeaked, and Jenka laughed a little. “Hy ken see vhy Dinreel likes you.”

Not giving Alice a chance to ask what _that_ was about, Jenka hopped up onto Füst, shouted something in Old Mekh, and they bounded away.

Alice stared wordlessly after them.

“So,” Dinreel said, catching Alice’s attention. She offered her arm. “Hyu like coffee shops, yah?”

Alice took a moment longer to process that than was strictly necessary, and then gave up and slipped her arm through Dinreel’s. “Well, I certainly have _opinions_ on coffee shops…”

o.o.o.o.o

“I have a question,” Benjamin said.

Alice twisted around to look at him, trying to ignore the entirely reasonable fear of falling. Being thirty feet up off the ground on a pair of silk cloths wasn’t, technically, dangerous for her. It was still terrifying.

“Now?”

“It’s not like anyone else can hear us up here,” Benjamin said. “Except Helios, but he left twenty minutes ago.”

Alice stared at him and then groaned. “Okay. Let me… change position.”

“No, you need to practice that one,” Benjamin said. He smiled at the betrayed look on her face. “I’m helping.”

 _“You’re being a jerk_ ,” Alice muttered.

“I don’t care,” Benjamin told her. “Sincerely, I don’t.”

Alice stuck her tongue out at him.

“Do you want to hear me the question or not?” Benjamin asked.

“I do not have a choice,” Alice said.

 Benjamin did something strange and spun himself upside down. Show-off. “If one of the boys in camp were to display interest in you romantically, what would you do?”

Alice stared at him, arching away a little despite the fact that she was supposed to be holding a split.

“It’s not about me,” Benjamin said, voice flat. “It’s not about any one person, really, but it’s definitely not about me. I am _fully_ aware of how useless that would be.”

Alice kept staring at him.

Benjamin shook his head. “I’m trying to say that I think you should consider telling more people than just myself and Lars.”

“I did not _try_ to tell you,” Alice muttered.

“No, you’re just terrible at hiding embarrassment when you’re around someone who’s shown interest that you’re _not_ rejecting,” Benjamin said. “Which, for the record, your attempts at explaining the actual nuances of how you do or don’t find yourself attracted to people are still confusing.”

“…I understood half of that,” Alice said. “Benjamin, please use smaller words.”

“You are hard to understand as a person,” he said. “But you are also easy to read, and very homosexual.”

Alice wrinkled her nose. “Okay, then.”

“…you still don’t like that word.”

“ _Gay_ and _lesbian_ are more pleasant. _Queer_ and _ace_ , also. ‘Homosexual’ has more… uh… bad ideas with it?” Alice lost her train of thought, muscles burning. “Can I change my position now?”

“All slang that worked for you,” Benjamin said. “We _can_ use lesbian, you know. It’s an older term, too, though some people may assume you mean you’re actually from Lesbos.”

“…you think?” Alice asked. “Can I move, also?”

Benjamin snorted. “Yes, you can move.”

 _“Finally,”_ Alice hissed, pulling her legs back together and shifting position until she’d pulled the silks into a position similar to swing, and about as secure.

_I can’t die I can’t die I can’t die I am literally incapable of dying I can’t die I can’t—_

“Look at me,” Benjamin said. “You don’t need to worry about the fall. You can survive this height.”

 _A normal GG native might, but—_ “Yes.”

“So, my question? How do you think you would react if one of the guys in camp tried to flirt with you?”

“Flirt?” Alice asked. “Um. That’s… trying to be nice to make a romance happen? Yes?”

“Yes.”

“The same way I reacted to Lars, probably,” Alice admitted. “And if they do not like that I do not like boys that way, and are rude, then I do not feel sad that they are angry.”

“Classy,” Benjamin said. “But true.”

“So… one of the boys here likes me?” Alice asked. “That is… um… I do not know the word.”

“My Arabic and French are better than my English,” Benjamin said. “So I probably can’t help much.”

 _“Flattering_ ,” Alice tried anyway, but Benjamin shook his head. She sighed. _“Worth a shot._ ”

“And the problem is not _that_ one of the boys likes you, but that one _might_ ,” Benjamin said.

“That would be a surprise,” Alice snorted. “Boys do not like me very… often? Often. And that is nice, at least. It helps.”

Benjamin eyed her strangely. “Really.”

“Lars likes many girls. I am not special. If you do not already know someone that likes me, then I do not think it will happen,” Alice said. She kicked her legs lightly, swinging back and forth. “You told me that it was a bad idea to tell Lars, right? Why is now different?”

“I thought telling Lars when you barely knew him, since he spends so much time out scouting, just because you felt bad about rejecting him was a bad idea," Benjamin told her. “Telling Olga and Yeti, two of the people you are closest to, is different.”

Alice crossed her ankles and looked down at the ground so far beneath her, clung to the headiness of the height, and wondered what it would be like once she finally performed this instead of just practicing. Maybe it would feel like flight.

“Are you okay?” Benjamin asked her.

“Mm-hm,” Alice hummed, still watching the ground. She leveraged herself around to face headfirst at the ground.

_I can’t die I can’t die I can’t die_

“O…kay,” Benjamin said. “You do that, then. Try not to let too much blood go to your head.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be,” Yeti sighed.

“Maybe,” Lars agreed.

“No, you can’t just _give up!”_ Olga insisted. “Come on! You like the girl, you need to at _least_ find out if you have a chance! If she turns you down, accept it, but she hasn’t even done that yet!”

“Lars is convinced she wouldn’t be interested,” Yeti pointed out. “He’s probably got a reason.”

“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” Lars said quietly, picking up one of the little glasses from the low table they were sitting around, which Olga had set around the little table as a post-show refreshment, and putting it to his lips. He coughed a half-second later. “Oh man, someone got rakija?”

“I did,” Olga said. “That’s not the point. The point is that Yeti needs to ask out Alice the next time he gets a chance.”

“Uh,” Lars said, very eloquently. _“Uh.”_

“We’re only here for a few more days!” Olga pointed out. “She’s doing some of that book shopping tomorrow, we can all go along, and he can do it then!”

“Do I really need to be here for this conversation?” Benjamin asked.

“Yes,” Olga told him. “Now drink.”

“I don’t want to,” he said. “I also don’t want to be involved in your plans, Olga; they always go in ridiculous directions.”

“They do not!”

“Remember Mira? With the pancakes?” Benjamin asked.

“Oh, yeah, that _was_ kind of Olga’s fault,” Lars said. “Yeti, do you—”

“The gerbils, yeah,” Yeti said. “Sorry, Olga, your plans _do_ tend to… go a little pear-shaped.”

“You’re all traitors,” she sniffed. “Also, this isn’t about me. It’s about Yeti, and how he’s going to ask out a cute friend.”

“And how are you planning to get it to work tomorrow?” Lars asked.

“Like I said, she’s going book shopping. She apparently hasn’t had time to do it yet, and really wants to do it before we leave the city, so we’re all going to go with her, and then we’re going to leave Yeti and Alice alone for a few minutes, and hopefully that’ll be enough!”

“Where’s the part where you get Lars arrested again?” Benjamin asked.

“That was one time,” Olga huffed.

“It was way more than one time,” Lars reminded her. “We’re both very lucky that I know how to use a lockpick.”

“You’re _all traitors_.”

o.o.o.o.o

“So… Veliki Bečkerek?” Alice asked.

“Hy’ve got to meet vit mine brodder,” Dinreel said. “De vun by blood, not _chust_ a Jäger.”

“Oh,” Alice said.  “I didn’t realize you had blood family left. I don’t think you’ve mentioned him before.”

“Ve iz tvins,” Dinreel said. “Hyu might know _heem_ , eef hyu know Jenka und Maxim.”

Alice started. “Oh? So… probably either Oggie or Dimo, then.”

“Yez! Dimo und Hy, ve got lucky. Ve both took de bräu, und ve both survived. De chance of dot vas verra low,” Dinreel said. “Und Hy am goink to go see heem. Ve don’t see each other verra much now, und Hy’ve got to run around doink de Heterodyne search.”

“Even if you know you’re already going to get one?” Alice asked.

Dinreel grinned, far too many teeth on display. “Ho yez. Iz part of de job, yez? But Hy’m goink to be comink to see hyu vhen I can, in de vinter months. Hy’ve got de mobility den, more den de groups, und more den Jenka. Und… Hy am thinkink dot hyu dun mind me comink by too much, yez?”

Dinreel reached out and caught a rogue lock of Alice’s hair around one clawed fingertip and pulled it towards herself. “Hy dun suppose hyu mind eef hyu see me more den my brudders or Jenka, hm?”

“I, um…” Alice could feel her cheeks reddening. “I mean…”

Dinrell stepped back a little. “Dere’s a problem, den.”

“Not a problem… I mean… I don’t…” Alice swallowed. “That was flirting, right, definitely a casual way of saying you were going to try to keep, um, courting?”

“Mebbe,” Dinreel said. “Eef hyu dun mind, und… vell, Hy’ve got people everyvhere. Hy do not heff just one partner, but everyvun knows about de odders. Iz dot okay mit you?”

Alice swallowed, and nodded, and said, “That part’s fine. I just, um… I had a really bad relationship, before, and it’s the only one I’ve had so far, and I’m a little scared of starting anything new, and I’d be really, _really_ slow about starting anything sexual. It would be just cuddles and kisses for a long time, probably, because I just… I have issues. The slow stuff isn’t just the toxic relationship, either, it’s some, uh, medical stuff. So. That’s a bunch of stuff to consider. I’m a little messed up and would be moving really slowly, and… well, if you have other partners, then I’d be able to have others too, right?”

Dinreel takes a moment to process this, nodding slowly. “Hokay. Hy ken get dot. Hy theenk dot vould be fine. More den fine. Hy like de spicy times, but Hy ken go slow and or not go dere, no _problem_.”

“Right, okay, cool, that’s…” Alice swallowed again. “Awesome.”

“Und hyu ken definitely have odder gorls! Hy’m… eh, hyu ken say dot Hy’m married, but like a friend, to Filly. She iz mine wife in all de vays vot matter, und is my… ah, primary partner?”

“Right,” Alice said. “And, um… I might freak out for no apparent reason sometimes. And all the Dreen-Gift stuff means I have to keep secrets, and I have trouble recognizing subtle signs about whether someone’s upset or… I might just be _sad_ for no reason, too, and… I’m not sure I’d be the best partner, is the thing.”

“Hy know dot,” Dinreel said. She put a hand on Alice’s shoulder and squeezed. “Hyu’ve said most of dot before, und Hy know dot. But Hy still like hyu, ja? Eef hyu vant me to stay, or… vell, eef hyu vant me to stop by, sometimes, and make vit de keesseeng und de cuddles, den Hy vould like dot.”

Alice nodded. “Right. Okay. I, um… yeah. I would like that.”

“Yez?”

Alice met Dinreel’s eyes and nodded with more conviction. “Yes. I think I’d like that a lot.”

Dinreel’s face broke into a wide grin again. “Hoy! Dot’s _verra_ good to hear.”

“Yeah?”

“Ho yez,” Dinreel said, stepping closer and pulling Alice into a tight hug that had her squeaking in surprise and forcibly expelled air. Dinreel let go and stepped back, though she kept her hands on Alice’s upper arms. “Und Hy ken brag to all mine brudders about gettink to cuddle de verra cute circus girl vot’s a Dreen Gift und told us about de next Heterodyne, too.”

Were Alice’s cheeks burning? They were. “Making them jealous?”

“Hyu iz verra cute, Mizz Nixy,” Dinreel said, leaning a little closer and putting a hand to the back of Alice’s head to gently pull her down and forward. “Hy am thinkink dot any of my siblings vould be _verra_ jealous to hear dot Hy got to be hyu partner, even eef eet iz chust sometimes.”

Alice ducked her head, reaching up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. “Um. Thank you. That’s very sweet of you.”

“Iz true!” Dinreel told her. “Und on dot note, before Hy go und meet Dimo und tell heem all about de cute gorl vot’s givink all of us Jägerkin a bit of hope… mebbe Hy ken have a kiss?”

Alice looked up, met Dinreel’s eyes, and then leaned in and kissed the woman’s cheek.

The motion pushed her glasses out of position, and she busied herself fixing them for a moment. Dinreel was still smiling, and… well, Alice moved before she lost her nerve.

She planted a kiss on Dinreel’s mouth, held it for maybe two seconds _at most_ , and then leaned back and bit her lip. “Um. Uh. Yeah. Safe travels?”

Dinreel laughed, grabbed Alice’s hand, and planted a kiss on it. “Hyu ken count on dot!”

Then she pulled Alice into another crushing hug, stepped back, and swept off her hat with a bow. “Until de next time, Mizz Nixy!”

She put her hat back on, jumped up and back into the darkness of the trees, and disappeared.

Alice waited a few moments, and then clapped her hands over her face.

“Oh my god, I’m _so gay.”_

o.o.o.o.o

Benjamin did, technically, share his wagon with Herr Helios. Given that the wagon in question was a small, split-level airship that was almost definitely bigger on the inside, however, it felt rather a lot like he didn’t.

As a result, he had his own room to contemplate things in peace, avoid the sparks when they were going a little too crazy, and have private conversations as a result of his coworkers barging in to talk about whatever was on their minds.

Lars had knocked.

Technically speaking, Alice had, too, if one considered a series of rapid-fire knocks to be knocking and not something far more annoying and concerning.

He opened the door. “What.”

“Can I come in?” Alice asked. She was bouncing on her toes, red in the face, and her eyes were unnervingly fixated on him.

“…yes,” he said, after a few moments to wonder what could possibly be this urgent.

Alice slipped inside, waited until the door was closed, and then immediately burst out with, “I kissed Dinreel!”

Benjamin stared at her, waiting for the rest. “You… mean you didn’t kiss her before?”

Alice opened her mouth, paused, and then carefully said, “This was the first time I kissed her.”

Fair enough. He’d worded the question rather oddly. “So she’s courting you? Or you’re courting her? Or something else?”

Alice blinked at him. “Courting?”

Right. Easier words. “Who’s moving first? Who’s… chasing?”

“I don’t know,” Alice admitted. “I do not think it will be very… not-fun?”

“Serious.”

“That,” Alice agreed. “I do not think it will be very serious.”

“So you got a girlfriend,” Benjamin said. He nodded slowly to himself a few times, and then once to her. “Well done.”

 _“High five?”_ Alice asked, holding her hand out to him.

“…what?”

She gestured with her other hand for him to hold his own out, and then took his wrist and lightly tapped their palms together. “High five!”

Benjamin blinked at her, and then shook his head. “Alright, then.”

He considered the situation for a few moments and then asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Alice shook her head. “No, I just need to be happy about this where people will not ask questions about why.”

Strange, but fair. “Hug?”

Alice grinned and practically launched herself across the tiny width of the cabin to lean up against Benjamin’s side and… grab his hand to lace their fingers together, apparently.

“She is _very nice_ ,” Alice said, squeezing his hand. “I like her. A lot.”

“Okay,” Benjamin said. There wasn’t much else he _could_ say. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He couldn’t contribute much, honestly, but he figured it was worth it for Alice to have somewhere to _smile_ at her memories without interrogation.

(It wasn’t like the girl was _never_ happy, but her resting face when she thought was usually fairly bored, edging on sad or angry, and when she _did_ smile, questions usually turned up something about a story she planned on writing.)

(Benjamin wasn’t sure how good of a liar Alice was, but he figured nobody wanted to be put on the spot to come up with lies about this sort of thing anyway.)

(He patted Alice on the head a few times. She seemed to like that.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET


	16. The Serpent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice gets very, VERY gay. People notice.
> 
> Also there's feels. And food. Running into an old favorite food in another dimension when you had low hopes of ever seeing it again is a NICE FEELING.

“Wait, really?” Alice asked. “I thought you were going to go to a bar with Lars or something.”

“Nah, nobody’s really looking for a hookup this early in the day,” Olga said. “And Yeti said he was looking to get some new books on gravitational metaphysics. I wouldn’t say no to picking up some penny sparklies myself.”

“Lars does not read much,” Alice pointed out. “Why does he want to come to a book store with us?”

“I talked him into helping me carry things,” Olga dismissed. “And we’re probably going to go looking for some other stuff after we’re all done with the books. Don’t worry about it.”

Alice blinked at her. “And Benjamin?”

“I think he just wants to make sure nobody gets in trouble,” Olga said. “You know. Considering what happened last time.”

“…okay,” Alice said. She grabbed the journal that housed her shopping list. “Let’s go, then.”

o.o.o.o.o

“That is… a _lot_ of books,” Lars muttered, staring at the stack Alice had collected on her first pass through the store.

“She doesn’t own a lot,” Olga said. “And I think she’s sorting through them right now to decide on what she wants to keep.”

“They have the latest from England!” Yeti exclaimed, sliding next to them, with a comically small book in his hands. “It’s Genevieve Henderson’s _The Modern Applications of Paracelsian Metaphysics and Astronomical Deviation!”_

Lars and Olga looked at each other and then at Yeti again.

“Good for you!” Lars said.

“I have no idea what that means but yeah, what he said,” Olga said. “I just found some penny sparklies, so I’m fine. Where’s Benjamin?”

“I think he saw some recipe books,” Yeti said. “Is… is Alice getting _all_ of those?”

“We’re not sure,” Lars said.

“I don’t think so,” Olga said. “Hey, maybe you can go talk to her?”

“She looks busy,” Yeti pointed out. “Maybe later. I’ll just go check out.”

Olga gave Lars a dirty look as Yeti brushed past them, and continued to give him that same dirty look for the next ten minutes as Alice took her sweet time deciding.

Benjamin stepped away from the counter where he’d apparently started checking out his books without them so much as noticing, looked at from one to the other, and then shook his head. “No.”

He went over to Alice, and Olga tossed back her head with an “ugh!” and went to join Yeti in talking to the shop owner.

Lars looked at Yeti and Olga. He looked at Alice and Benjamin.

He went to wait outside.

The others came out a few minutes later, and Lars fell into step as they headed further down the street.

“What did you get?”

“ _A Detailed History of the Rise and Fall of the Shining Coalition,_ ” Alice said, in English, and followed it up with, “ _The Creation and Mythology of the Storm King’s Muses,_ _Heterodynes Through the Centuries_ , and _Srpske Bajke i Pripovetke.”_

“Why so many history books?” Olga asked.

Alice shrugged. “This store had more things like that than like the other things I was looking for, especially in the English area.”

“Why a book on the muses?” Lars prodded. Had she figured out Moxana?

“…I like clanks,” Alice said at length. “And the Muses are the prettiest of all clanks, yes?”

“Sure,” Benjamin said, stepping up beside her and hooking his arm through hers. “That’s exactly why.”

Alice stared at him. “You do not believe me.”

“No.”

“Benjamin,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “They are _very pretty_.”

Benjamin stared at her evenly, and then groaned. “No, Alice.”

Alice shrugged. “You know what I mean.”

“I do, and it’s weird.”

“A lot of things are weird,” Alice dismissed. “I am also friends with Jägerkin. That is weird too.”

The pieces finally clicked into place.

 _“Oh,”_ Lars said. “ _…really,_ Alice?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can find things interesting, Lars.”

“…sure,” he said. “Interesting. Right.”

“Any of you going to explain the joke?” Olga demanded.

“Later,” Alice said, before either of the boys could answer. “Not now. It is very silly.”

Lars looked at Olga and shrugged, then yelped as Alice grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the next bookshop up the street. “You don’t need to pull me!”

She paused, looked back at him, and then… winced? She stopped, letting go. “Right. Sorry.”

Lars hesitated and put an arm over her shoulders. “It’s okay. Let’s just go to the shop, yeah?”

He sent a look at Benjamin, who just gave him a confused, wide-eyed look and shook his head. Olga and Yeti were no better.

“So, four books down,” Lars said. “How many left to go?”

Alice tilted her head, considering, and also at least a little distracted. “…many. More than I can pay for, probably. I will be… um… _picky?”_

Yeti translated before Lars had a chance to even ask.

“Some are more important than the other ones,” Alice stated. “I can make a decision when I see what they have.”

“And how many bookstores are we going to visit?” Lars asked, suddenly worried.

“Not many,” Alice said. “It is… um.”

She paused, and then turned to Yeti and Olga and rattled something off in words Lars didn’t have a hope of understanding.

Yeti looked as confused as Lars felt for a moment, and then said, “Apparently a variety of marketing and psychological studies have shown that while a wide product variety is often appreciated in customized or long-distance shopping experiences, in person they can provide such an overwhelming amount of choice that a person ends up buying less overall than if they’d only been provided with limited options, and that this often manifests as extended time spent choosing that ends in simply giving up rather than making a choice of purchase. It can also, at the other end, lead to people buying things they had no intention of buying in the first place and sometimes not managing to buy even what they came for in the first place.”

“So,” Alice said, after Yeti finished. “We are not going to visit many stores because that will spend too much time, or be distracted. We will visit only what we need for my list, or if you have something you would like to buy.”

Lars nodded slowly, and then asked, “So, you just… read marketing studies?”

Alice looked at him sideways, confused. That was fine. Lars was kind of confused too. “Lars, I went to school for that.”

“…right,” Lars said. “I forgot about that.”

She looked forward again, pursing her lips to keep from smiling. “It’s okay.”

“So what’s left?” Lars asked. He watched Alice struggle to rearrange the books in her arms for a moment to draw out her journal. “Do you want me to carry some of that?”

 “…please,” Alice said. When Lars took the other books, she opened the journal and flipped through to the page that apparently had her list of books to buy.

There were a lot.

“Um… I want to read some Heterodyne Boys books, to practice my Romanian, and I think that it would be a good choice because of the shows. A history book about the Other War, and how the Wulfenbach Empire happened. Tarot book that has the Queen’s Deck, books to learn, um, Japanese and Spanish. Some psychology books, and that one coffee book, and maybe some books on… rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“You mean geology?” Yeti prompted.

“Yes,” Alice admitted. “I like rocks.”

“Wait,” Olga said, leaning over. “What about the one that has your name in it?”

“There’s a book with your name?” Lars asked.

“No! I mean, um… there is a book where the character is also named Alice,” she said. “And… the one I want to have, _Alice in Wonderland_ , it is very important, for reasons.”

“Reasons?” Olga prompted.

Alice looked down at the journal for a moment, and then snapped it shut. “Yes. Reasons. I do not want to talk about it.”

“Like—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Alice cuts Olga off. “It is… about what I did before the circus. It is not for a _happy_ reason, but I hope it may make me feel more happy. Because _reasons.”_

Well. That was… not the best. Lars squeezed Alice’s shoulder, and she ducked her head.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and then she just twisted away and headed for the bookstore.

“Well, that went well,” Benjamin muttered.

Olga rubbed at her temple. “Right. I should really stop pressing when she says she doesn’t want to talk about something.”

Alice was already hunting down the English section when they got inside, and then scouring titles with an intensity that was… honestly a little unnerving.

“What’s your favorite Heterodyne Boys novel?” Olga asked.

“Me?” Lars responded. “Um. _Race to the West Pole,_ I guess?”

“Let’s find her a copy,” Olga said. “She said she wanted to practice her Romanian with some of the novels, right? She could use recommendations.”

“You think so?” Lars asked. “She’s seen a lot of plays by now.”

“And understood how many of them?” Benjamin said, before Olga could.

“…fair point,” she admitted. “I’m thinking _Butcher of Kiev_. She laughed when I first told her the title.”

“ _Socket Wrench of Prague?”_ Lars jokingly suggested.

Olga fixed him with a flat glare. “With all the innuendos and slang in there, who do you think is going to be answering the questions about what a certain phrase means?”

“…I’m sure she could figure it out,” Yeti pointed out. “She’s not actually a kid.”

“Not her first language,” Benjamin said. “Or second, actually. Or… I think she said it’s her sixth, if we count the ones she’s not fluent in.”

Yeti shook his head. “Okay, so Olga would have to explain the puns and slang. Skipping _Socket Wrench.”_

“It wasn’t actually a serious suggestion, you know,” Lars said. “I still say _West Pole.”_

“Just go find it,” Olga said, elbowing him. “And anything you might want for yourself, I guess.”

Lars blinked at her, and then turned to find the book. Something for _himself?_ That was… okay, so he didn’t read much, but…

Well, he _could_ get one of the racier _Trelawney Thorpe: Spark of the Realm_ penny sparklies… he’d heard a new one had come out a few weeks ago…

Lars busied himself with wandering, trying to keep an eye on Yeti and Olga without looking like he was doing so. Olga was apparently pumping Yeti up, and Benjamin had disappeared in the direction of the cookbooks. Lars grabbed what little he had interest in, and then heard Alice speaking to… probably the shopkeeper, given the context and language. She used Romanian or English with the circus, but Serbian was her default when speaking with locals for the past few months.

(She sounded… more comfortable, then. Her voice pitched _high_ in Romanian, and was a more normal and level in English, but she actually dropped even further in Serbian. He’d pointed it out once, and she’d shrugged, saying that the newer a language was, the higher her voice tended to go.)

(It was _weird_ , except at least a few other members of the circus had said they did the same thing.)

“Sorry, but… would you be able to help me find something? Your English section is larger than I was expecting, and I can’t find the psychology books.”

“You need it in English, specifically?”

“Yes, sorry. There are other books I need, too, if you have a moment.”

“Not a problem at all, my dear. Follow me.”

Lars leaned around the corner, then followed the voice. Olga and Yeti were still whispering in a corner.

He’d planned on joining them, really. He hadn’t planned on standing at a crossroads in the bookshelves and staring.

And yet.

He had a reason, at least. The proprietor was apparently a construct, and Lars hadn’t seen her earlier. Her torso was mostly human, but her lower half extended in a long, thick snake tail that she dragged from around a corner to coil under herself. He figured that was probably so nobody would step on it, or trip over her, mostly so he could stop thinking about it and actually see what was going on. The woman’s upper half was… okay, so mostly human _did_ cover it. Her skin was dark, and her features were mostly South Asian, he thought, but her eyes were larger than expected, slit and yellow, and there were patches of green scales on her face and neck and bare arms, matching the tail. She wore a pastel ensemble with poofy, translucent sleeves and a frilly white overskirt that draped over the tail without getting in the way as she slid around, grabbing books, and—

 _Okay_ , turns out snake lady could leverage herself _very_ high with that tail. It was longer and stronger than Lars had thought, from this angle. She’d definitely made herself a yard and a half taller for a moment there. Then she smiled, and Lars saw fangs, and he thought maybe he really was better off staying away.

“You should take a seat,” the snake woman said, with that odd half-smile. “This may take a minute.”

“There’s not really anywhere to sit,” Alice pointed out. “I mean, other than on some of the shelves, I suppose, but that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Nonsense,” the snake woman said. “There’s a seat right here.”

The tip of her tail swung up and lightly poked Alice in the chest, tipping her over backwards so she fell rear-first on the woman’s coiled-up tail.

“I… I mean…” Alice stared up at the woman, who leaned in close, still half in the air. Her hair swung forward over her far shoulder, a curtain around them. Alice leaned back a bit, reddening. “I think…”

“You are not as subtle as you think, little one,” the woman said, and then swung away, that smile back on her face.

Alice was still red. She whispered, only barely loud enough to hear. _“Oh my god.”_

Footsteps came up behind Lars, and Benjamin’s voice was quiet but far too amused. “Wow.”

“She’s…” Lars said, voice low. “She’s not very good at this, is she?”

“No,” Benjamin said. “No, she’s not.”

Lars put a hand over his mouth, watching.

The woman dipped back to talk to Alice a few more times, flashing her fangs and tossing her hair over her shoulder.

“Hey guys, what’s—oh! Wow, okay, was not expecting that.”

Lars was suddenly very aware of what exactly they were playing audience to. “Hi, Olga.”

“I wondered why there were so many snake decorations,” Olga said. “Is Alice okay? She’s looking really uncomfortable.”

“She’s fine,” Benjamin said.

“Are you sure?” Yeti asked, sounding a little worried. “She’s not great at uncomfortable situations, right? So—”

“Yeti. She’s _fine,”_ Benjamin said.

Lars watched as Alice tucked her hair behind her ear, ducked her head and said something too quiet to hear. The snake woman laughed and patted her on the shoulder.

Alice looked up, biting her lip in a way that did nothing to hide her smile. She nodded at whatever had been said.

“You’re adorable,” the snake woman said. “And, as I said, anything but subtle.”

“I’m, um… yeah,” Alice said. “Okay. That’s… yeah. I can see how you’d think that.”

“Like knows like,” the snake woman said. “And I’ve been on this earth longer than you’d think.”

“Oh?”

“Some fifty years, now,” the snake woman said. She smiled again. “You are far from the first I’ve recognized on sight. Your reaction to me, in particular… well, it’s not that difficult to see, dear.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t… I wasn’t trying to be rude, I just—eep!”

The snake woman smiled, then swooped around Alice in a loop and came to the front again, tapping Alice on the nose. “Trust me, I am _flattered_ by the attention, little one.”

“…um,” Alice said. Her eyes were very wide. Her cheeks were very red. That odd, breathless smile was still on her face. _“Um…”_

 _“Oh,”_ Olga said. “She’s… oh.”

“That definitely explains why you thought it was a bad idea,” Yeti muttered. “I did not… expect that.”

The snake woman uncoiled from around Alice and laughed. “Well, ready to get checked out, dear?”

“I can’t afford that many,” Alice said, eyes dropping to the books stacked in her lap. “I mean, I want to, I do, but—”

“Nonsense,” the snake woman said. “You amused me, and in some ways… we are the same, are we not? I’ll give you a discount, and… here.”

She placed one last book on Alice’s stack. “On the house.”

Alice looked down at the book, then closed her eyes and groaned.

“Not a fan?”

“Thanks,” Alice whispered. “But this is very embarrassing.”

“Adorable,” the woman asserted, and then rustled her coils in a way that pushed Alice to her feet. “That was all, yes? Let’s get you checked out.”

“Um… yeah…” Alice said, following along. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

She disappeared from view, and Lars waited a few seconds.

“She didn’t even notice us, did she?” Olga asked.

“No,” Benjamin said. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t.”

“…I feel dumb now,” Olga said. “How could I have not known? We’ve been friends since she joined the circus!”

“She was trying very hard to keep it a secret,” Benjamin said. “As I did, at first.”

“I… okay, yeah,” Olga said. “But, wait, only girls, or—”

“Only girls,” Benjamin said. He turned to Yeti. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but—”

“No, no, this actually makes me feel a lot better,” Yeti said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was worrying a lot that it was just the construct thing, but after… uh, _that,_ I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t have been the problem if…”

“Yeah,” Lars said, patting Yeti on the arm. “Hey, remember Dinreel?”

“The Jäger woman that— _oh, blue fire,”_ Olga groaned again. “I _really_ should have noticed that.”

“Again, nobody else did,” Benjamin said. “Except me, but… well. I’m obviously better equipped to notice people like myself.”

“Right,” Yeti said. “Um… she’s not going to mind that we found out?”

“Well, first of all, she was planning on telling you,” Benjamin said. “Or at least was considering it. Second of all, I’m fairly certain she’d have said she was trying to keep it a secret to the proprietor there if she was actually worried about you seeing a _very_ public incident.”

“You can go talk to her,” Lars offered. “Tell her you saw? Clear the air?”

“Probably the best option,” Benjamin said, with a Meaningful Look.

Olga and Yeti looked at each other, and then Olga sighed. “Yeah. Probably best.”

“C’mon,” Lars said, bumping Olga’s shoulder with his own. “Hey, you can probably make fun of her for not even being able to _talk_ from meeting a pretty snake lady.”

Olga suddenly looked thoughtful.

“Wait,” Yeti said. “So, earlier, that whole thing with the prettiest clanks…”

“Yeah,” Benjamin said. He suddenly sounded dead tired. Lars could relate. _“Yeah._ That’s a whole _thing.”_

“So, a Jäger, pretty clank girls, a snake woman…” Olga trailed off. “A pattern, or just a coincidence?”

“Just coincidence, I think,” Benjamin said grudgingly, like he didn’t want to be the one having this conversation. “But this hasn’t exactly been our kind of conversation.”

“It’s just a coincidence,” Lars confirmed.

Olga and Yeti turned to look at him.

“…what? I like girls, she likes girls, we talked.”

Olga shook her head. “Wow.”

“I was just trying to be a good friend!” Lars protested.

They did get to the register. The bookshop was large and convoluted and very full, so they’d taken their sweet time doing so. That sweet time was rewarded by the site of Alice actually managing to go through her purchases in an orderly fashion, only the barest hint of a blush left.

“Oh, and how much are those bookmarks in the corner?” She asked, just before the end. “The little metal filigree ones? I can’t see them very well from here, but I have a little spare cash left, and…”

“Would you like to see them?” The snake woman asked.

“Sure!”

Lars expected, as most people would, that the woman would uncoil herself and balance up high as she had before to grab the set of bookmarks and bring them down.

This is not, in fact, what the woman did.

“Eep!”

The snake woman scooped Alice up in a bridal carry, lifting her up to where the bookmarks were. Alice flailed a little, and then pulled her arms tight to her chest and stared at the woman.

That fang-filled smile was back. “Do you like any of them?”

Alice kept staring, and Lars could have sworn he heard a little whimper of what _might_ have been fear, and might have just been… a general sense of being overwhelmed.

“Go on,” the woman urged.

Alice turned almost mechanically to the sets of bookmarks that lined the walls, and stared. After a few long moments where Lars was starting to worry, she picked a group out.

The snake woman collapsed back into her coil, setting Alice gently down on her feet with an amused, indulgent smile.

Alice swayed. She looked down at the bookmarks in her hand. She looked back up at the snake woman. She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a strangled little croak.

“Oh, you are just the _cutest_ ,” the woman said, with a hissing little laugh. “Consider those a gift. You seem to enjoy them _ever_ so much, after all.”

“…uh-huh.”

Lars waited a moment, and then said, “Now _that?_ That was not coincidence. _That’s_ a thing.”

Olga slipped past Lars and over to Alice, skidding to a stop against the counter. She poked Alice in the cheek, and then looked up at the snake woman.

“I think you broke her.”

“Perhaps,” the woman said, finally switching to Romanian. She still looked amused. “It does tend to happen sometimes. Friends of hers?”

“Yeah,” Olga said. She looked back at Alice and poked her again. “Hey Alice? Aaaaaaaaalice? You in there?”

“…oh my god,” Alice squeaked. Her face was flaming. “I… I…”

“Okay,” Olga said, patting Alice on the shoulder. “How about you pay for your things, and then we can get out of here?”

“Uh… uh-huh,” Alice said. She was staring at the counter, and—no, no, Lars had a better angle now, she was staring into space in the vague direction of that massive tail. Great. “Right. That. I will do that.”

The snake woman quoted the price, _very_ heavily discounted, by Lars’s estimation, probably by at least half. She then sank down until she could plant an elbow on the counter and lean her head on her fist, watching.

Lars glanced at Yeti and Benjamin. Wide-eyed disbelief and a dead-eyed humor, respectively. Awesome.

“I haven’t had this much fun teasing one of the younger ones in a while,” the snake woman said. She took Alice’s money, did a few exchanges in the cash drawer, and then slid the pile over. “You’ve been entertaining, dear. Stop by again sometime.”

Lars shared a look with the others, and then at the short stack in his own hands. He’d been planning on giving Alice the Heterodyne novel before she paid, but all things considered…

“Take her outside,” Benjamin said, grabbing Lars’s books. “You can pay me back later. Yeti’ll get hers.”

“Goodbye~” the snake woman called. “I’ll see if I have time to stop by the show before you leave town, hm?”

Lars took Alice by the elbow and led her to the door.

“…so,” he said, once they were outside. “I know you said you liked the idea of a woman you’re into picking you up, but that was… definitely something.”

“…shut up,” Alice said. She groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Oh my god. Oh my _god.”_

“You okay?”

“I… I don’t… I was so dumb,” Alice said. “Oh my god. She thought I was a _child_ , did she not? I acted so _stupid!”_

“No, I think she just thought you were very impressed with her,” Lars said. He squeezed Alice’s shoulder. “Or something like that. You know, I don’t think I’ve seen you get like that around a woman before.”

 _“No use crushing on straight girls,”_ Alice rattled off.

In English, of course.

“…I don’t know what that means,” Lars said.

“It means that I do not… I try to not hope about girls that only like boys,” Alice said. “And most girls only like boys. So I do not hope many times. It is easier that way.”

Lars nodded slowly. “And you don’t just… get attracted anyway?”

Alice shrugged. “Not the same way as you might. It is complicated. I do not have the words for it in this language. They may not exist. Often, they do not.”

Lars decided to accept that and move on. “And the snake lady…”

“Dragana,” Alice said. “Dragana, um… she had a name from far away. Indian, I think. Ku… Kulkarni?”

Lars nodded. “Okay. So. You… reacted a _lot_ to her.”

Alice flushed, though thankfully not as intensely as before. “It is different when someone is _trying_ to… um… make me feel silly?”

Lars raised an eyebrow.

“I do not know the word for _fluster_ ,” Alice said. “But that is what I mean.”

“Sure,” Lars said. “Okay. You know Olga and Yeti saw all of that, right?”

Alice looked down at the ground and hugged her arms around herself. “Um. Yeah. Did… did they think it was weird?”

“I think you’re good on that front,” Lars said, putting an arm around her shoulders and shaking her into a side hug. “Olga was mostly upset that she hadn’t noticed before. Yeti was… relieved. He can explain if he wants.”

“I don’t know what that word means,” Alice said. “Relieved.”

“…well, I can’t help you there,” Lars muttered.

Alice leaned into him, and then shot up straight. “My books!”

“Yeti’s got them!” Lars assured her, before she could go running back in. “It’s fine. We’re good. I’ve got the ones from the last store.”

Alice hesitated, and then relaxed back into him. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Lars said. “Hey, you got all the books you wanted, and for cheaper than you expected, too. _And_  you got to meet a nice older lesbian.”

Alice buried her face in her hands. “Oh my god…”

“You keep saying that,” Lars said. He patted her. “It’s fine.”

She groaned wordlessly and buried her face in his shoulder. He patted her head.

A few minutes later, the other three were out, and Yeti was laden down with more books than he’d probably planned on buying today. There was a bag provided, at least.

“She okay?” Olga asked. “Hey Alice? Your brain working again or are you just going to make noises at me like you did inside?”

Alice shifted just enough to look at Olga. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Olga said. “You’re okay?”

“…embarrassed,” Alice said quietly.

“I can imagine,” Olga said, with the grin of a woman who planned to use the last few events for teasing material for the foreseeable future. Given that she was, in fact, a professional fortune teller, the foreseeable future was quite a distant future indeed. “You should have _seen_ how red you went!”

Alice groaned and went back to hiding in Lars’s shoulder. He patted her again, and she swatted his hand away.

“I’m… I think I understand why you didn’t tell me,” Olga said, at length. “Probably? I mean, Benji—”

_“Benjamin.”_

“—said that he just figured it out, and that you told Lars when he tried to kiss you,” Olga said. “And that nobody else knows? So I think I get it.”

Alice was quiet for a few moments, and then turned to face Olga again.

And spoke English, _again_ , so of course Lars was understanding approximately nothing.

_“I’ve heard stories before about straight girls who, when they found out their roommates were gay or… sorry. Um. Heterosexual girls? Girls who only like boys, when they find out that their roommates were homosexual or bisexual, you know, that they liked girls, the straight girls would ask for transfers, or just start getting really paranoid about the roommate for basically no reason other than general homophobia and that sort of thing, and… I don’t know. You’re a great friend and I was worried you’d kick me out because of, like, predatory lesbian tropes and stuff like that.”_

Lars had no idea what the vast majority of that meant. But he watched Alice’s face, and Olga’s, and figured that maybe he didn’t need to. Olga looked like she understood the situation a bit more, and Alice was looking more nervous, and—okay, hugging was happening.

 _“I’m sorry you had to be scared like that, but I promise it’s not going to be a problem,”_ Olga said. _“You’re a good friend of mine, okay? I’m not going to kick you out for something like this. It’s not something I have a lot of experience with, but I’m friends with Benjamin and I’m friends with you, and all this means is that it’s going to be easier for me to tease you now.”_

Alice hugged her back, and Lars pretended not to notice how close the girl was to crying.

Nope.

Alice detached herself from Olga, rubbing at her eyes, and then turned to Yeti. “Um. Yeah. You… got all that.”

Yeti shifted the books to one arm and held out a hand. “What was it you said? _High-five?”_

Alice grinned and tapped her hand to his. “Yeah. Wait! Um, Lars said something, with… a word I did not understand? ‘Relieved.’ He said you would be that about me.”

Yeti gave Lars a betrayed look. Lars shrugged. Discomfort time, ahoy.

Then there was more English, and Alice and Yeti both looking about as uncomfortable as Lars felt, and then then Alice punched Benjamin in the shoulder. “Liar.”

Benjamin shrugged. “It was for a good cause.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “I don’t care.”

“Does that mean I’m supposed to? Because I don’t.”

Alice shook her head, and then smiled and rubbed her eyes. “Thank you. All of you. I have worried a lot about this.”

Olga slung an arm around her shoulders, and pointed off down the street. “No problem! Now let’s go get some lunch before we have to head back to get ready for the show. I heard there’s a lot of great shops that way.”

Alice shrugged, still smiling softly. She turned to Yeti. “I can carry my books.”

He lifted them out of her reach. “You’re tiny, no.”

“I am five feet and seven inches,” Alice told him. “That is not tiny. It is even more than is normal for a woman.”

Yeti stared at her. “Your arms are going to get tired. Mine won’t.”

Alice shifted uncomfortably, and then sighed and nodded. “Okay. Fine. Lunch, then. I still have some money, but not much. Nowhere expensive.”

“Pfft,” Olga scoffed. “We’re circus folk. We don’t _do_ expensive.”

“This is very true,” Benjamin said. “Unless someone happens to con a young local lord that recently came into a very large inheritance, and gets herself—”

“One time! That was one time!” Olga protested. “And it was only a small fire!”

“That’s still more fire than necessary,” Lars told her.

Alice giggled.

They kept walking, bantering and laughing and keeping perhaps a more careful eye on Alice than usual, when she suddenly stopped, staring across the street.

Lars followed her eyes. There were a few stores: a shoe shop, a clothing repair hole-in-the-wall, and a sign he couldn’t even read.

ラーメン屋

“Um…” Lars said. “Alice?”

 _“That’s a ramen shop,_ ” she said. “That is… that is a _ramen restaurant!”_

Lars leaned over to Olga. “Do you know what ramen is?”

Olga shook her head. Benjamin and Yeti followed suit.

“I have not had ramen since… since before I joined the circus,” Alice said. She tore her gaze from the storefront and whirled to face the rest of them. “Can we go? Do you feel like trying new food?”

“Um… sure?” Olga said. “What kind of food is it?”

“Japanese,” Alice said immediate. “ _Um, it’s noodles, different kinds of broths and additives and usually there’s pork and egg and scallions and it’s probably different here than it was back home or in Tokyo but I really,_ really _love ramen. There was a ramen festival once and it lasted eleven days and I went four or five times in a week, and I wasn’t even in town for three of the days, and I didn’t find out about it until after it had already started.”_

Olga stared at Alice, and then turned to Lars and Benjamin. “Japanese noodles that she’s apparently obsessed with. I think she might ditch us to go alone if we decide against it, actually.”

Alice opened her mouth to protest, and then subsided. “…I would.”

“Might as well try it, then,” Lars said. “Don’t know if I’ve had Japanese before.”

“I have, but not this,” Yeti said.

“I’ll give it a shot,” Benjamin said.

Alice squealed, hugged the nearest person, who happened to be Yeti, and then dashed across the street.

“Also, _when_ did you go to Tokyo?” Olga demanded as they crossed the street. “This is news to me!”

“Four months, college,” Alice said. “I liked it there very much.”

Olga threw her hands up in the air. “How many more things am I going to learn about you today?!”

“I hope not many,” Alice said. She smiled at Olga. “A girl needs some secrets, yes?”

She slipped in through the front door, and then they were all ushered to a few empty seats at a long counter. There were menus, with titles in Japanese, and then descriptions in Serbian and Romanian. Alice was flipping through it, mouthing something to herself, and then tilted her head and listened and—

“Eh, sumimassen! Tonkatsu ga imasuka? Eh, iie iie, ano… ton _kotsu_ ga imasuka?”

Lars blinked, turned to look Olga, and then back at Alice. “I thought you said your Japanese was bad.”

“I _really like ramen,_ and also I just messed up,” Alice told him.

“Nai! Miso to shio to shoyu ga aru!”

“…I messed up more than I thought,” she admitted. “I mixed up aru and iru. Again.”

The waitress that had shouted back laughed. “It is nice of you to try, but maybe study more. Also, it is ‘ni’ for iru.”

“Well, I did get books for that,” Alice sighed. “I forgot… most of it.”

“But you remember how to ask for food,” Lars said.

“I got it wrong!” Alice protested. “In more than one way!”

“Why did you _try?”_ Benjamin asked.

Alice shrugged, uncomfortable. “I, uh… miss it.”

Well. That was as depressing an answer as they ever got. Lars patted her on the shoulder. “Let’s just get some food.”

They ordered, with some difficulty, and Alice throwing out some words that only the waitress understood. About ten minutes later, they had their food.

“I hate using these,” Olga muttered, picking up the wooden sticks they’d been given. “My hand always cramps up.”

Lars wasn’t having much luck either. He resigned himself to pushing things onto the spoon with the chopsticks and eating it that way. Benjamin was having marginally more luck, but even he wasn’t doing too well.

Alice and Yeti were inhaling their food at the speed of lightning.

“…you know,” Olga said. “I believed her when she said she went to a ramen festival, but this would have confirmed it for me.”

Alice slowed down, chewing and giving Olga a look. “What does that mean?”

“Confirmed? It’s—”

“No, I mean… what is that supposed to mean? The sentence. What are you seeing to make you think that?”

“…you know how to use these things,” Olga said, waving her own set of chopsticks. “You’re only barely fumbling anything, and even that’s the slippery stuff like the egg.”

Alice looked down at her bowl, and then shrugged. “Practice. I like Japanese food. And some Chinese.”

“We can tell,” Lars told her. “Trust me, we can _tell.”_

Alice bit her lip, grinning a little, and ate a bit of pork. “Ramen is one of my favorite foods.”

“It’s good,” Yeti agreed. “Not sure I’d eat it as often as you said you did—”

_“Listen—”_

“But yeah, it’s good.”

Alice stuck her tongue out at him, and then went back to inhaling her food.

(Lars didn’t pull her attention to it when Benjamin stepped to the side with one of the cooks for some advice. Better it be a surprise, right?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone asked about the Japanese over in the discord server, so I'm bringing my explanation here too:
> 
> Alice's initial mistake, that she recognized, was saying tonkatsu instead of tonkotsu. The former is a type of fried meat, and the latter is a type of ramen. Tonkotsu is the kind of ramen where the broth is made with pork bones, which is why she recognized and realized what the mistake was as she was speaking; kotsu means bone (something drilled into her head by Inuyasha). Shio, Shoyu, and Miso are also types of broth. (I do not like Shio. It makes my lips burn. There maybe an msg sensitivity involved.)
> 
> Iru and Aru are both versions of to be, most commonly used to say "there is." Alice asked "Is there tonkotsu?" and was told "No, but there's shio, shoyu, and miso." The problem is that iru is used for people/animals, while aru is used for inanimate objects, and Alice used the wrong one.


	17. The Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How to Make Friends and Influence People: Be a Pushover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for extensive mentions of pre-canon death. Also anxiety brain.

“How do you do it?”

Alice looked up from her breakfast to find Pix sitting next to her, looking put out.

“Do… what?”

Pix gestured around them in frustration. “How do you _make them like you?”_

Alice stared at her. “…what?”

“I know my English is good enough that I didn’t make a mistake there,” Pix said, crossing her arms. “You’re… you’re the newest except me. How did you _do_ it? I’m… I have _acquaintances_ , sure, but I get—I get fixed smiles and strained conversations. People don’t actually like me, and I’ve been here long enough that… _most_ people would have made friends by now, so how did you do it? You didn’t even speak Romanian when you joined, you didn’t have an _act_ , you didn’t— _so how?”_

Pix looked about ready to tear her hair out.

Alice kept staring at her, and then bit her lip. She reached out and patted Pix on the back. “I don’t… really know how to help you. I’m still confused myself. Friendship is _hard.”_

“So how did you do it? People barely put up with me here, so how did you do it?”

“I don’t know how to help you. You're amazing at your job, you don't have my communications issues, you—"

"But none of them actually like me. They like you. How did you do that?"

“…do you want the logical honesty, the emotional honesty, or the answer that actually fits my brain and is responsible but not in a happy way?”

“Give me all three,” Pix said, frowning in a way that suggested she was starting to doubt a plan that relied on Alice’s advice. That was fair. Alice didn’t trust her _own_ advice.

“I…” Alice trailed off. “I trusted people, I guess. I’m… um, I guess ‘probably autistic’ doesn’t mean much here, so… I had trouble making friends when I was younger, and in college I ended up in a very toxic situation, because I was… desperate. I’m an anxious mess, sometimes, and getting to where I am with the rest of the circus is… it took months. I still sometimes think that… that everybody's just pretending to like me. I'm a charity case. They took me in because I would have died otherwise, and then I just didn’t leave. I still worry that I'm not actually good enough to be here, and that I'm going to get kicked out once they realize that I really _am_ more trouble than I'm worth.”

Pix stared at her.

Alice looked down, tucked her hair behind her ear, and continued. “So, um… I guess the logical answer is that I've been here longer, was very careful not to offend people, and you tend to be irritable and don't really do the whole give-and-take part of building a relationship, because you like to focus on yourself."

Pix made a small noise that Alice really, really didn’t want to try to figure out.

Alice took a deep breath. “The actual answer, the one that fits my brain but isn’t happy, is that I was a charity case. They let me join out of pity. They had to teach me almost everything before I could contribute in a meaningful way. I was terrified of getting kicked out when they realized I was more trouble than I was worth, and I did my best to avoid stepping on toes, to be nice, to be kind, to be pleasant and friendly whenever I had the energy for it. I'm still scared that they'll look at someone like you, who's good at this without help, and realize they should have left me behind a long time ago. I'm scared that people will resent me for needing as much help as I do, that they're only kind out of pity, or because they were told that they had to be, or out of guilt. Parts of me still believe that people only continue to put up with me out of pity, that all the friendships I've built are fake, and that they're going to turn around and tell me that it's too much effort to keep pretending to be my friend. So the answer is that I'm a pushover, that I try to be kind and pleasant and as little of a problem as possible, and that I panic myself whenever I snap at someone. I assume people are on the fence about liking me at all times, and that makes it easier to stay on my guard about becoming a problem. If people actually do like me, and I really hope they do, then it's because I try to be the kind of person they actually like being around.”

Alice looked up. Her heart was beating way too fast, and felt a little like it was about to jump out of her chest. Pix was staring at her.

"...why the _hell_ are you so convinced people are going to leave you? Or make you leave? I'm pretty sure that 'too much effort to keep pretending to be your friend' is a little overboard, especially considering you’ve been here for half a year, so why even consider it?"

"Because it's all happened before, and anxiety brain is convinced it'll happen again. Pattern recognition, really."

Pix flinched back.

“…you okay?”

“How long… how long of a friendship were you in that ended like that?” Pix asked.

“…three years of actual friendship, maybe two and a half?” Alice hazarded. “And then a month or two of them pretending to be my friend, after I cut myself off from the rest of the group because I’d realized how incredibly toxic they were.”

Pix hesitated, and then shook her head. “I can understand that, I suppose.”

“It’s better than it used to be?” Alice offered. “There was, um… there was some stuff, recently, that convinced me more that people actually care and aren’t just _pretending_ to. That helped. But in the long-term, it was the fear of hurting someone, or getting told to leave, or just being the friend that nobody likes that kept me from doing anything to push people away. And, uh, again, I’ve been here longer than you. These things can take time.”

“So your solution is to be a terrified pushover?” Pix asked.

“No,” Alice said. “That’s… not great mental health, and you should honestly avoid anything even close to it. But… be nicer. Show interest in other people. Don’t turn conversations around so that it’s still somehow about you.”

“I don’t—!”

“You do,” Alice cut her off. “You really do. And you’ve got a lot of good stories, and you’re good at your job, but you tend to be… self-absorbed, and a little bit of that ‘all about me’ vibe, and people don’t really like that.”

Pix crossed her arms and huffed. “You’ve been paying attention, then.”

“…kind of?” Alice shrugged. “I just know what you’ve done to annoy _me_ , not counting professional jealousy, and—”

“Wait, stop, what?” Pix shook her head and raised a hand. “Professional jealousy?”

“…you’re a _lot_ better at all the skills and roles you need to do for the circus than I am,” Alice said. “You came into this with experience. I didn’t. It’s not a reasonable cause for being annoyed at you, and it’s also something that doesn’t really apply to anyone else, so I’m not counting it.”

Pix crossed her arms and frowned at Alice. “Fine, sure, whatever. So I’m supposed to just… stop talking about myself?”

“Don’t strawman,” Alice said, nose wrinkling. “I’m not saying stop talking about yourself _entirely_ , just… be mindful. Ask questions about the person you’re talking to, polite ones, obviously, but… every relationship in existence is a give-and-take unless we’re talking about someone so helpless they _can’t_ engage that way, and you’re not exactly a newborn, so that doesn’t apply.”

“Are you calling me childish?”

Alice flinched. “No. Sorry, didn’t mean to imply that, it’s just the actual exception. Babies can’t build relationships the way adults do. Small children, too. The power dynamic is so imbalanced that other rules apply. But you… yeah, you need to engage in the give-and-take. Be genuine, be careful, and put in the effort.”

Pix opened her mouth to say something, and then snapped it shut. She shook her head. “Fine.”

“What were you going to say?”

“Nothing nice,” Pix said. “But nothing warranted, either. You’re actually answering my questions, even if the answers aren’t…”

“Pleasant?” Alice suggested. She shrugged with a parody of a smile. “It’s… yeah, it’s never fun to try to work out why people don’t like you. I’ve done it enough times. But if you want to move forward, it’s necessary.”

Pix peered at her for a moment, and then made an irritated noise and buried her face in her hands. “Stage is so much easier than real people.”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “Humans are weird.”

“You say that like you aren’t one.”

Alice snorted. “I’ve read too much meta on how weird humans are compared to the rest of the planet to _not_ think there’s something funky going on.”

“Funky?”

“…let’s just go with weird,” Alice muttered. “I can’t… explain funk in the context that I know it.”

“Why not?”

“Extensive cultural background that I’m pretty sure you have no way of knowing about and can’t explain without sounding a little insane myself,” Alice stated. “Also it’s just… a lot of effort for something I’m not sure I can even explain, so I’m just not going to bother, if that’s alright with you.”

“What happened to the give-and-take?” Pix asked, but… there was a teasing note in her voice, when Alice tried to listen for it.

“You already got the level one tragic backstory,” Alice sniffed. “Possibly level two. You’ve used up your backstory points for the day, please check in again next week.”

Pix snorted. “I feel like there were more jokes in there than I’m getting, huh.”

Alice shrugged. “Well… yeah.”

They sat quietly for a few moments, and then Pix said, “I’m married.”

Alice sat up and stared at her. “Uh… come again?”

Pix looked away. “Legally, I’m married. I ran away. I’m not going to share more than that, but… it happened. You said you were sharing bits of your ‘tragic backstory,’ the parts that I didn’t already guess or hear from the others, so there’s mine.”

“Oh,” Alice said, a little faint. “I definitely didn’t know that. Er… thanks for trusting me.”

“Just following advice, right?”

“…right.”

o.o.o.o.o

_The Queen’s Deck: Meanings, Myths, and Mysteries_

Alice wasn’t going to read the entire thing right now. The other books took precedence and, quite frankly, she wasn’t sure how much time she was going to have to read when switching off with Olga on driving the wagon either.

She just… needed to know.

Moxana had responded to her question of whether Benjamin was slated to die by canon with three cards: _The Winding Path, The Oracle,_ and _The Hourglass._

The standard, bare-bones meanings were listed as such:

> The Winding Path: Fated paths, destiny, crossroads and defining choices, inevitability  
>  **Reversed:** Fatalism, refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, loss of opportunity to inaction
> 
> The Oracle: An unexpected visitor, a fortune teller, a Dreen-Gift, pride going before a fall  
>  **Reversed:** Abandonment, an incoming danger, loss
> 
> The Hourglass: Mutability, faith, efficiency, spiderwebs, wisdom with age  
>  **Reversed:** Fear of change, inconsistency, blind belief, refusal to consider new ideas

Even before, Alice hadn’t had much experience with tarot. She’d found the cards pretty, and listened when people gushed, but she hadn’t really _understood_ them. She’d had trouble memorizing them, and a difficulty in putting stock into magic and faith and religion had meant she’d never found a reason to try learning herself.

Moxana, though, was something beyond human. Canon had said as much. The deck she used was created by an Eternal God Queen. Alice didn’t know _how_ accurate this made her, but she knew it was a damn sight more solidly based than anything she might have struggled to believe in before.

None of the cards had been reversed.

So… was Benjamin fated to die?

 _The Winding Path_ suggested yes.

 _The Oracle_ was… well, her. The Dreen-Gift.

 _The Hourglass_ was confusing, but… mutability.

Alice could change that. It wasn’t set in stone. He wasn’t important enough to the plot for it to matter whether he lived or died. He wouldn’t influence the time loops. The Dreen wouldn’t _stop_ her.

She could save him.

Alice closed the book and leaned back against the wall, head thudding softly against the wooden wall of the wagon. It rattled as the wagon trundled along, but she didn’t lift it for several minutes more.

_She could save him._

Eventually, she got up. She put away the Queen’s Deck book and picked up the leather-bound volume that Jenka had given her.

> _Dreen Gift (alt. Dreen-Gift, Dreen-gift, Dreen gift) n. and adj._
> 
> _A Dreen-Gift is a person of otherworldly origin sent to the world with knowledge of the past, present, and future that can be used to shape the world’s fate…_

Alice read until the carriages stopped. She read about DenKatt, first, Jenka’s pride in her home’s first shining Gift layered under a veneer of professional distance. There were a few chunky sketches, similar in detail to the old political cartoons, of the many paintings that had been done on the subject of “The Freezing of Denkatt.” The Renaissance had resulted in a quite a few of those, and each painting was followed by a short description of the artist’s access to the cavern, their accuracy, and a handful of other details on how they’d chosen to portray the incident.

It would have been beautiful, in the way history often was, if not for the deep twist of fear in Alice’s chest. It could happen to her. She knew it could.

She finished the section on Denkatt after dinner, declining offers to hang out from the other circus members. She stayed curled up in her cabin, as warm as she could manage, and read on.

The second Gift to be discussed in detail was Lady Timothea Turner, apprentice to Van Rijn and member of the Storm King’s court.

Jenka had provided her journals as well.

Timothea was _interesting_. She’d been active only two centuries ago, compared to Denkatt’s six, and the effects she’d left were much better recorded, if inherently more confusing. She’d had encounters with the Muse of Time, and… apparently Agatha, if color coding held true in the real Europa as much as it had in the comic. She’d been a Spark, too, something Alice had only been vaguely aware of as a possibility for Gifts, and she hadn’t even gotten Statued.

(Alice knew all the Statued Gifts. Not by name, not by personality, not by face, but by the silent, unending terror that the Dreen faced her with every time she thought of them.)

There were journal excerpts in the textbook, little snippets and—

> _—a webcomic by the name of_ _⌂⸗◌┘●▫◦⸗□⌂┘▫┘ by ⌂č◊▪ and ◌┘●▫ └●□ⱷ●ⱻ, which—_

Alice stared as the muddled, illegible symbols blurred before her eyes and resolved themselves.

> _—a webcomic by the name of_ _Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Folgio, which—_

No.

_No._

_No no no no no—_

Alice skimmed the rest, picking up bits and pieces and—

> _—Simon Voltaire would often refer to her as ‘Timmie’ in personal conversations, a nickname that—_
> 
> _—revolutionized lab safety across Europa, starting with Van Rijn’s own labs and the Palace of Enlightenment—_
> 
> _—new forms of chemical analysis that had been hitherto unknown, introducing a prototype periodical table of elements and—_

She opened the journals. More blurs revealed themselves. Not all of them, but enough for…

> _—goddamn MOUTH PIPETTES but it’s not like bulbs even exist yet, so I look like a lunatic and—_

_No no no **no no no NO NO NO NONONONONONONONO**_

Alice grabbed the journal and left the wagon.

She shouldered past Flatmo, not caring of the fact that he yelled after her to watch where she was going. She muttered “I’m fine” when Olga asked what was wrong. She took the long way around the fire and headed for the props wagon. She ignored the twisting in her stomach. She ignored the burning in her eyes. She ignored the tightness in her throat.

She didn’t need questions and she didn’t need delays.

Alice slammed open the door to the props wagon and then locked it behind her. She stepped forward to Moxana, blinking furiously and unable to even form the sentence in the face of the Muse’s silent stare.

“Was it her?”

Moxana blinked and tilted her head.

“Timmie. Timothea Turner. You knew her. She was apprenticed to Van Rijn, and… Moxana, I knew someone with that name. I knew someone who was obsessed with lab safety and mouth pipettes and read this comic and _please, just tell me, was it her?”_

Moxana’s brow pinched, and even with her inhuman features and too-large eyes and nonexistent mouth, the expression was easy to read.

Pity.

 _“No,”_ Alice whispered, falling to her knees and clutching the books to her chest. “No, no, no, it can’t be, it should—she shouldn’t have _been_ here, I can’t just—Moxana, please tell me I’m wrong, please just tell me it wasn’t the Timmie I knew, I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t _right,_ this is _hell,_ please tell me she didn’t— _Moxana, please!”_

It felt like the passage from nose to throat was bloated and rubbed raw. She couldn’t see past the tears, and her chest was starting to spasm with the heaving sobs she knew would be coming soon.

“Moxana, just… _please.”_

There was a gentle whirring of gears, a soft click and whump and the shift of paper.

Alice looked up, found Moxana beckoning her closer.

Alice set the books to the side, and shuffled closer. Moxana beckoned again, and Alice reached out.

Moxana took her hand, pulled her in close, and hugged her.

There were no words. There couldn’t be.

But it was a confirmation.

Alice shuddered a little, the rage and fear and grief building.

Timothea was already long dead. The textbook had said she’d disappeared, but if she’d gone the way of Van Rijn, her corpse was lying in a forgotten room somewhere, never even given a proper burial.

Her friend, the one person that had known home as she’d known it, the one person that had known canon as she’d known it, the one person that had known _her_ … was dead.

And had been for centuries.

And she’d been through this _fucking bullshit_ of a “gift” for a decade and a half first.

The lump in her throat grew. So did the shudders.

Moxana pushed her away, and tapped the table.

There was an envelope, yellowed with age and with folds where it had been shoved awkwardly into a dark corner and not-quite-forgotten.

_TO: NIXY_

Alice stared at her, the words refusing to compute.

She looked at Moxana, who nodded, and then back at the envelope.

She tore it open.

> Hey.
> 
> Wow, where do I start? If you’re reading this, you’re… well. I’m sorry. If you’re reading this, you’re a Dreen Gift like me, and you’ve been dumped in Europa and met Moxana. I am so sorry. Not about meeting Moxana, of course! She’s great, but also a jerk sometimes—don’t show weakness or she will never let you live it down. : ) She’s a good friend.
> 
> I’m rambling, my apologies.
> 
> My name is Timothea Voltaire. If… if you’re who I think you are… I might have known you. Not in person, but online. My canon, what got me sent here, was a webcomic called “Girl Genius,” written by the Foglios and colored by Cheyenne. It was 2018, for me, when I ended up here. You’d… you’d gone missing, a month ago. You vanished from the server, and a few weeks later they were sharing “Have you seen this woman?” on tumblr and—

(Tears stained the paper, here. The ink circles were somehow still damning with age.)

> I wouldn’t wish being a gift on anyone, but if you’re reading this, I am so glad that you’re alive.
> 
> If you haven’t figured it out already, I went by Timmie, on the fan discord. the mysterious internet entity on AO3, (and hah! I had a self insert, what irony. I daydream about being back home, nowadays. I didn’t really appreciate how good I had it). That’s Science! or More Gil than Dril or any number of other silly nicknames.
> 
> Hi Nixy.
> 
> Anyway. I ended up here in 1690. By the time you’re reading this…I’m probably long gone. Hopefully of old age and not ~~statued~~ ~~satu~~ ~~statue-d~~ made into a statue by the _Dreen._ (you can imagine the spite and bitter hatred in my voice there. I’m sure you get my feelings). I’m assuming you’re around by my—our—ACTUAL canon. I’d say you’re lucky, but honestly? Good luck. I have no idea what’s going on half the time, but at least I don’t have to deal with the Muse of Time and Lucrezia and all that nonsense. Mostly.
> 
> If you make your way to Paris and he’s still around, (and it won’t make you dreadfully uncomfortable, no pressure), give Simon a hug for me? (Yes, Simon Voltaire, yes that is my last name, it’s a long story that honestly I’m just going to leave for him to tell because I’m a wimp like that and I know that you would give me no end of crap for it).
> 
> If you can… find the muses? They’re… I love them all, so much, even the ones who didn’t care for me or who I barely got to know, and it kills me that they’re going to end up where they do. They’re Good People. (Also, you can vent to them about most of the things about the future. If it isn’t directly tied to their own fate, they can theoretically see it, ESPECIALLY Moxana. Moxana knows a lot of what’s happening because I talked to her about it, she can hear it without you ending up phasing).
> 
> But most of all? Be safe. Be happy. Try and save Europa and Time and Space and all that nonsense, but don’t forget to live your life too. Make friends, build a life, find people that you trust.
> 
> It’s lonely but you don’t have to do it all alone.
> 
> Best of luck and Fuck the Dreen,
> 
> Timmie
> 
> P.S. IF YOU END UP IN LABS BE SAFE OR I’LL COME BACK AND HAUNT YOU <3
> 
> P.P.S. YOU’RE WELCOME FOR THE TOILET PAPER. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW I SUFFERED.
> 
> P.P.P.S. Hug someone. Press X. Try not to mourn me too much, okay? I don't know where things will end up, but I'm pretty happy right now. Find your happy times in between the plot shenanigans and stupid main character people making stupid decisions.

Alice stared at the paper.

She read it again. Her hands were shaking.

And again. Her hands shook harder.

They phased.

The paper slipped through her fingers and fell to the floor. Her hands shook from—from grief, from rage, from terror and just so much _anger,_ and her body responded by phasing. Her hand flitted across her own vision eight times over, and the destabilization spread higher, up to her elbows, to her biceps, to her shoulders, to her—

Moxana’s hand landed on her head, grounding.

Alice’s breath came faster, hitching and catching and like she couldn’t get air in deep enough or fast enough to achieve _anything_.

She clutched her half-there hands to her chest and screamed.

She sucked in a deep breath, dropped back into hyperventilation, tears flowing and chest burning and bent in half and _screamed._

 _She’s dead she was here and she suffered and she’s **dead** and I never even _ got to see her _and she’s dead she’s dead she’s **dead dead dead dead dead and—**_

Moxana pulled her closer, ignored the shifting and shaking and sobbing, and hugged her.

There was knocking at some point, worried questions from Abner and then others and—and she’d just shouted “GO AWAY” and hoped they’d all forgive her in the morning.

She fell asleep half-cradled in Moxana’s arms, clutching the letter to her chest.

o.o.o.o.o

She woke with a crick in her neck and gritty salt in the corners of her eyes, a sour taste in her mouth and tangles in her hair, and the weighty dread of knowing something horrible had happened the night before.

Moxana ran a hand down the back of her hair.

“…that wasn’t just a dream,” Alice said. “Timmie’s dead, and has been for… a long time.”

Moxana squeezed her shoulder.

They stayed like that as the sun passed down the wall, until Alice finally dug up the energy to sit up and stop stewing in her tears.

Alice looked around and spotted the letter. She picked it up, skimming again, and then struggled not to add more wrinkles to the fragile paper with her own recklessness.

“I…” she swallowed. “I can’t let anyone else see this.”

Moxana opened her table and held out a hand.

“You’ll… you’ll let me come back and look at it sometimes?” Alice asked. “When I need to?”

Moxana’s expression softened, and she nodded. Alice passed the letter over, and closed her eyes as Moxana whisked it away to somewhere she couldn’t see.

She wasn’t going to cry again. She wasn’t.

She… wasn’t.

Probably.

Moxana’s metal hand, warmer than it had right to be, took one of Alice’s and squeezed.

“I should go,” Alice said. “I… I yelled last night, and with all the screaming, and—they’re probably worried, and maybe a little mad that I chased them off instead of telling them what was wrong, and—what?”

Moxana weakened the last squeeze, and shook her head.

“…you don’t think they’re mad?” Alice guessed. Moxana nodded. “Right. Well. That’s… hopefully you’re right. I should still go.”

Moxana squeezed her hand one last time, and then let go and took up her usual position, eyes closed and fingertips together.

Alice stood up, smoothed out her skirt, and headed for the door.

The camp was quiet, for the hour. A few people looked Alice’s way as she passed, but they didn’t say anything.

She spotted Abner and angled for him.

“Alice!” he said, when he noticed her. “Hey, are you—”

“I’m sorry for yelling,” Alice said, as quickly as she could. English, now, she couldn’t… she couldn’t do Romanian right now. “I was… in a bad place last night.”

Abner gaped at her for a moment, and then shook his head and took her by the shoulders. “Alice, are you _okay?”_

“I…” she looked past him, saw the other circus members, saw people staring and some whispering and bitten lips and just… “No.”

“Did something happen?” Olga prompted, coming closer herself. “Or was it just random and—”

“I just found out one of my friends is dead,” Alice blurted out. “And… I couldn’t deal with people, with _humans_ , I just had to… cry it out, and you guys talk to Moxana about things sometimes, and—I’m sorry I yelled, I just _couldn’t.”_

“Oh, _Alice,”_ Olga said, pulling her into a hug. “Hell, don’t apologize for _that._ Anyone would be upset about a friend dying.”

Alice swallowed, feeling her eyes burn again. “I… she was the last one _left.”_

She squeezed her eyes shut, focused on her body, she couldn’t phase, not here, not now, not in front of so many people and when she was already unstable, she couldn’t just—

More arms joined Olga’s.

Alice shuddered.

She didn’t phase.

She cried.

(She was going to feel better eventually.)

(She _was.)_

(Press X and find the happy times, right?)

(Right.)

(…goodbye, Timmie.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET
> 
> Special thanks to the mysterious internet entity for writing that lovely letter for me.


	18. The Smashed Closet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All these plates are spinning, but at least one is getting set down. Finally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for the page that went up three hours ago.

Alice went back, later, with a question that had grown on her mind for most of the day.

“Did Timmie ever find out for sure?” Alice asked. “Did she _know?_ She obviously suspected, but… the jump from ‘Nixy went missing’ to ‘Nixy’s a Dreen Gift’ isn’t immediate, so…”

Moxana held up a card.

_The Device_

The only one Alice knew from canon.

“You told her,” Alice surmised. “She asked if I became a Dreen Gift, or… no, she’d have asked what happened to me in general, right?”

Moxana held up _The Oracle_ again.

“…I suppose if you answered with that, it wouldn’t have mattered either way,” Alice said quietly. “Do you know how she died?”

Moxana shook her head.

Alice hesitated, and then took a seat next to Moxana, leaning in close and closing her eyes. “I miss everyone from home, but knowing that Timmie was _here_ , and just didn’t… survive, I guess, it _hurts_. We missed each other by centuries, but she was here and I… all I’ve got to go on are _stories_. Records. Maybe I’ll luck out and be able to ask the Master of Paris, but…”

The tears were back.

Alice hugged her knees and took a deep, shuddering breath. Moxana wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and squeezed.

“I’m fine,” Alice said. “I’m fine I’m _fine I’m f̍̇̅i͕̭͉͓ͯ͋͡ñ͎̟̱̪̫̲̭ͧ̓̕e͕̓͗̍̎̊̾̚.̧"̯͔̘ͥ͜_

Her head shot up, eyes flying open, hands springing to her throat.

She turned to stare at Moxana, and squeaked out, “Did you hear that?”

Moxana stared at her, and then slowly nodded.

“I’m fine,” Alice said. Nothing. “Fine? _Fine._ I’m fine.”

Nothing.

Moxana tapped her shoulder, and then held up the Oracle again.

Alice looked at the card, and then bit her lip.

She held her hand in front of her face and focused. She pulled on the not-there feeling of a quantum shift, and the edges of her hand began to shudder. A ghostly afterthought of pins and needles, a phantom sensation that wasn’t there, crawling from hand to elbow to shoulder, and she pulled the feeling up to her throat.

"̡͈̗͕̇ͣ͗̔͆̄̔I̖̥ͭ̍͗͑͑̕'̱̥̖̊ͯm̮͈̺̍ͥͥ̇̇̚ ̖͉̟̗̫͑̾̆̅f̞̔ͯ͆͒͡i̶̳͕̬̯nͅͅḛ̵͕̄̽̊̅.̝̫̍ͩ̒̓"̫̤͓͔̽̈͒́ͥ̐

Wow.

Okay.

That was… certainly something.

Okay okay okay.

She could work with this.

Totally.

Definitely could use the voice of the eldritch horrors that haunted her nightmares when she spent too much time thinking of all the ways she could fuck up.

Moxana squeezed her shoulder again.

Alice reached to the side, groped around until she picked up a small wooden fan that she vaguely recognized from a show a month and a half ago. She held it in her palm, and tried to shift again.

It shifted with her, the fan fuzzing at the edges and then glitching with her, overlapping itself time and again. She focused harder, thought _this is not me_ , and pulled in the edges of the quantum sensation.

The fan fell into her lap.

She reached for it, and her hand passed through it, through her leg and skirt and eventually the floor, when she leaned forward enough. It pushed back at her, like… like buoyancy, maybe? She could stay here, if she focused, but if she lost focus, the fixed physical objects would expel her before she lost her quantum phasing.

Alice pulled her arm back out, tried to grab the fan again, failed. She hesitated, and then solidified her hand again. Something tickled at the edge of her mind, but she ignored it. She picked up the fan, solid, and then phased both it and her hand again. She passed her other hand through her wrist, fan still fisted in her grip, and then looked at Moxana’s table.

“Hold this?” she asked, handing over the fan. “Just open it up and hold it like a wall, and—yeah, thanks. Do you have a chess piece on hand?”

She did.

Alice stared at the fan. She phased her hand again, reached through it, and tried to pick up the chess piece.

The queen stayed stubbornly where she was.

Alice grit her teeth. Her hand wasn’t real, but if she focused, it would be and she could keep her forearm phased, couldn’t she? Real upper arm, phased forearm, real hand.

All she had to do was focus.

For one wavering moment, her fingertips brushed against the queen’s pale crown.

Then she lost it, and the niggling sensation that had been growing wormed its way to the front of her mind.

Alice pulled her arm back.

She stared at it.

It was solid, she knew that. She could touch the fan, could touch the table, could touch her knee and the floor and that weird glass orb that Olga had cackled over while playing an old witch last week. Her hand was real.

It didn’t feel real.

It felt fake.

It wasn’t her.

It wasn’t part of her, this wasn’t her world, this wasn’t her body, something was wrong—wrong—wrong—

Moxana poked her in the shoulder, and _that_ felt even _worse_ , somehow.

Alice shuddered away.

Alice. Alice? Her name was Alice, now. She didn’t feel like an Alice. She didn’t feel like a person. She didn’t feel real, why didn’t she feel real, what was—

“I think I’m dissociating,” she gasped. “I… I don’t know what to do. Is this because I was phasing? Did I trick my brain into it by going quantum too much? I don’t—I did this before, I dissociated before I came to Europa, sometimes, that isn’t _new_ but it can’t be just a coincidence, and—”

She clamped her mouth shut, the words gone. She could talk if she had to. She knew she could.

Words felt wrong. Talking felt wrong. The distaste was _visceral_ and she hated it. Her words were gone and nothing felt real and she wanted this to stop, stop, stop.

Alice got to her feet as quickly as she could. She had to get rid of this. Energy. Food? Dancing. Maybe. She had to go.

She looked at Moxana, who just gestured at the door, and then nodded.

Right. Leaving. Out the door. Something to get rid of this mood. Dissociation was bad. Not fun. Not good for the brain. Possibly a side effect. Bad. Time to go.

Time to go.

o.o.o.o.o

It took hours for the crawling, empty, unreal sensation to leave her.

o.o.o.o.o

“What are you drawing?” Olga asked.

“Uh… it is a dress style,” Alice said. “That I like very much.”

Olga tilted her head, looking over Alice’s shoulder. “Does the style have a name?”

 _“Rockabilly_ ,” Alice said. “I don’t know what it would be in Romanian. I do not think the style exists here, yet.”

“This is what you would wear if you had a choice?” Olga asked. She draped herself over Alice’s shoulders, arms coming around and down to something that was almost a hug, and pointed at the skirt.

“Sometimes,” Alice said. “I liked many styles. Different styles. I like the, um… _silhouette?_ The shape.”

“Mm,” Olga said. “The proportions are…”

“I’m not a very good artist,” Alice said. “It’s fun, but… I do not practice… no. Have not practiced. I have not practiced enough.”

“Do you want to?”

“I already chose to work on my stories,” Alice said. “I like to write more than I like to draw. I have practiced the stories for ten years. I am a… I _think_ I’m a good writer. Art is fun, but my writing is what I have put time into.”

“Uh huh,” Olga said. She put a finger to the edge of the paper. “May I?”

Alice shrugged.

Olga started flipping through. “The faces are… stylized? I don’t think I’ve seen this before.”

“It’s a common style for manga,” Alice said. “Which… I cannot tell you much about. It was a popular art form back home, but… uh… _imported?”_

Olga translated the word absentmindedly. “The things they’re wearing were common for you?”

“Yes.”

“You like to sketch fashions, then.”

Alice hesitated. “Yes? Sketch is…”

“Draw,” Olga said. “What’s this?”

“Um… _street, I guess?”_ Alice shrugged again. “It was common in _Spanish Harlem,_ and in many of the, ah, shows I watched. It was popular with many girls my age.”

_“Spanish Harlem?”_

_“A neighborhood just north of where I dormed for college,”_ Alice said.

“The more you tell me, the more confused I am,” Olga admitted.

Alice hummed noncommittally and leaned back, closing her eyes and letting her head rest in the crook between Olga’s neck and shoulder.

“I can actually see you improving as I flip through,” Olga said. “I think I see a few faces coming up more than once, too.”

“Characters from stories I liked,” Alice said. She didn’t open her eyes. “I can talk for hours about some of them.”

“Cool,” Olga said. “I’m bored. Tell me about, uh… him.”

Alice opened her eyes to see what Olga was pointing at this time.

“Not a character, just a body to put nice clothes on.”

Olga flipped a page. “Her?”

Alice’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Leah of Hel. I can… I will need to do it in English, but once I start talking about her, it can take a long time to explain. Longer, since you do not know the bigger Marvel story.”

“So tell me,” Olga said. “Like I said, I’m bored.”

Alice smiled. _“Do you know what ‘infodump’ means?”_

Olga shook her head.

_“…well, you’re about to find out.”_

o.o.o.o.o

"̹̖̜̝͓̑͑̾͠I͒̃͑͒͐͐ ̦̞̑̎́͐̀̑ä̤̮̬͖̪̭̞ͣ̍̏͒̌̉m̂́̄͐͡ ̝̠̟͖̟̟̀͌̇̾̆̑t̴̼̼̪͔̣͈ͪ͛̄ḣ͍̩͚̰̰̠̇̇eͤ͑ ̦̖̖͕͓̟ẽ̈́̊̃̓̎̀̕n̷̆͛ͫd̫̰ ̦͚̿ͬ͐̆͗̎̎o͍̞̠̠͑̄̌̈̌ͤ̚f̜͚̻̪͈̅ͥ͒ͫ ͍͙̤̻͈̘̮ͫ̄a̝̦l̗̗̭͖̮ͦͣ̈͗̚ͅl̪͈͉͑̈́̉ ̹̳ͦ̊̓t̫̘͎ͣ̿͐̿h͔̰͙i̦̥̰͙̝̓͠ͅn̥̬̬̪͍͔̥̎̽ͤģ̠͈̈́̈́ͩ̑s̹̩̻̠̑̾͛̆͡ͅ,͚̬͈̹̯̓̐̅̄̍"̪̘̼̗̏̄̿ͣͬͭ̑ Alice whispered. "̪̥I̖̣̩̻̚͘ ̦̖̆̈́̇͑a̠͎̟͇̽͛ͬ̇̿̐ͮm͔̜̺ͬͣ͊͌̽̍ͫ̕ ̹͓̘̃̄ͦ͌ͅṱ̗͔̪͈̈̆ͅhe̮̱̝̜̻̮ͯͩ̓̍ͬͬ ̠͙̹͍͉̂̓͐ͤͭͣͪe̋ͩ͗͗̂ͯ̕n͈̖̫ḍ̴̤̣̱̳̹͓͑̏̊̋ͨ͌̅ ͖̭̟̼̠̈͒̍̚o͓̖f̙̺̗̱̃̉ͭ̅ͬͅ ̳ͬͭ̍a̺ͥͯ̈l̷͎̪̤̲̏ͩ̍ͬͮͅl̩̈́̂ͩ̎ ̅ͤ̾͑͐̒͢ṫ́̓̋͌͏͍͔̜̹h̖͇̼̄̕i̞̮̩̜̦̓ͯͥͪͪͭ͡ͅń̰̰g̣̳̟̟͓̖̘ͮͨs͎͈ͥͨͯ?̖̗̺̩̓̅ ̮Ï͓̉ ͍̞a̬͔͓̻ͨ́̐ͮm͔͕̱ͧ̍ͬ̓̇-̱̳̥̺̳͍̝͊̔̐ͨ͛ͬ̄-̫̬͚̒͛̂͛̎̓͂ͅ"̱̱̺͉͔̲̈́ͦ̏̚

Moxana’s bell rang, and Alice looked at her. One painted metal eyebrow rose, and Alice winced. “Sorry.”

Dramatic one-liners in the voice of Eldritch Horrors could wait.

(She’d always harbored a minor interest in voice acting. This was just… an extension of that. Kind of.)

Moxana shook her head and pointed at the book in Alice’s hands. Alice looked down at it, and then sighed and retook her seat next to Moxana, cracking open _A History of Dreen Gifts_ once more.

She didn’t get very far. Three pages into Cindy Bonheur, and her vision flashed.

Pages.

Pages with—

No, absolutely not, absolutely the _fuck_ not, what was this? A Dreen? Something related to them? God, Wooster had trusted a _teenage Heterodyne_ to disable a device instead of fixing it just to see it work, what was he _thinking_ and she’d have loved the pages with the timey-wimey nonsense around Higgs and Tarvek and the _infuriating new person_ if she hadn’t been face to face with the fact that this was going to make her job _so much harder_.

Fine, okay, more time-shifting, dimension-tearing weirdness. Localized time distortions to the new guy that were… honestly, she had no idea if her quantum shifting would render her immune or not. That was weird enough that it might have affected her, right?

Also, _soul bonds. Apparently._

Higgs being confirmed as older than she expected, probably by quite some time, and—and—and—

AND SOUL BONDS. APPARENTLY. BETWEEN HIGGS AND TARVEK. BECAUSE THAT WAS HAPPENING NOW FOR SOME REASON.

She let out a high-pitched noise eerily reminiscent of a tea kettle.

The pages started to fade, and she panicked. There was too much going on, and yet not enough, and she needed to be able to see what was going on, leach every little hint from this pages, had to—she grasped at the faint thread of feeling that stretched from her to the page, tried to grab for that disintegrating connection, and _pulled._

It flickered in front of her, strengthening for one single, golden moment—and then flickered right out.

Okay.

Okay okay okay.

Fine.

She’d figure it out anyway. She’d slowed the page down once. She could do it again. She could totally keep a page around longer, next time. She’d practice.

Now she just had to theorize on what was going on with the dimension-weird _new person._

She craned her head back. “Hey! You couldn’t have warned me about this earlier? _Nothing?”_

No answer. Probably just as well, but _still._ She had to plan around this now, and she only had bits of what she was supposed to be working with! She’d be getting more soon enough, she was sure of it, but how much would she have by the time Agatha arrived?

She turned to Moxana, who shrugged.

Great, no help from that corner either.

Fine.

She’d make do.

o.o.o.o.o

Three weeks out from Beograd. Two weeks until Novi Sad, if they didn’t get hit by another blizzard.

Alice crooked her knee, wrapped in silks, and let go of the tense stretch leading up to the airship with one hand. She reached out with the other, swinging it round to make herself spin, and tried to ignore the strain in her core as she lifted her other leg, hooked it in, let go with her arm and—

“On the ground, kid!”

Or that.

Alice slid down, came to a stop in front of Helios, and tucked her hands behind herself. Her legs ached. Ow.

“You’re going to roll up,” Helios told her. “Arms only.”

“But—”

“You’re weak on it,” he interrupted. “So we’ll practice that. Then you can run through the performance sequence. With any luck, you’ll be ready by Novi Sad.”

 “It’s only a few days away,” Alice muttered.

“You’re close,” Helios said. “Now. Roll up.”

Benjamin didn’t look at her, but he did smile. He even laughed a little.

She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

o.o.o.o.o

“Alice?”

“Hm? Oh, Pix.” Alice looked around a bit, and then scooted sideways on the steps to her and Olga’s wagon. “You wanna sit down?”

Pix blinked slowly at her, and then plopped down on the offered seat, dropping her chin onto her hands in what Alice could only describe as a sulk.

“…something wrong?”

“I tried talking to Dejana and Dragomir,” Pix said.

Tumblers and jugglers, mostly. They had an act, too, playing off an impeccable sense of comedic timing and the clear sibling relationship. “And?”

Pix’s face spasmed. “They were polite.”

“…that’s it?” Alice hazarded.

Pix shrugged. “Yes.”

“Ah,” Alice said. “Er… well, I’m sure it’ll be better next time. You’re working on it and all.”

Pix looked sideways at her. “You’re doing that thing again.”

“Hm?”

“When you speak English you sometimes start to… go really fast and lose parts of the words,” Pix said. “’You’re’ became ‘yer.’ ‘And’ became ‘n.’ Things like that.”

Alice opened her mouth, thought better of it, and then shook her head. “I’ll be more careful. Accents and all that. I still have mine.”

“Mm-hm,” Pix said. “I did have… another question for you.”

“Hm?”

“The circus,” Pix said, and then hesitated. “They’re all…”

Alice waited.

“They’re all sparks, aren’t they?”

“Oh,” Alice said. She blinked. “No.”

Pix turned to stare at her. “You’ve been here for months! You must have noticed!”

Alice shrugged. “I spent half of that time barely able to speak Romanian, but also… no.”

“They’re all sparks, Alice.”

“They’re not,” Alice insisted. She was even telling the truth. Less than half the circus was sparky. “I would know.”

Pix crossed her arms and grumbled. “There has to be _something_ going on…”

Alice patted her on the shoulder. “Okay.”

Pix shot her a sideways glance. “So you say.”

“Pix. Do I look like the kind of person who knows things?”

The two stared at each other, and Pix said, at length, “Yes. You do.”

“Huh, that’s new,” Alice mused. “Not used to knowing things. Generally more used to wandering through life with a fraction of understanding as to how anything manages to function and a shadow of a prayer that reality won’t assert its ugly face to ruin my day again.”

“Do you listen to yourself when you talk?” Pix asked. “Do you plan these things ahead of time? Or is this just random, inane babble?”

“Yes,” Alice said, and grinned when Pix rolled her eyes.

“You’re ridiculous,” Pix muttered. “Anyway. You and Benjamin. Talk to me.”

“What, the sequence we’ve been practicing for Novi Sad?” Alice asked. “I mean, we’ll probably debut it a little early, just as a dry run, but—”

“No, I mean,” Pix gestured vaguely. “Are you, you know, together?”

Alice stared at her.

_They said it was fine, the circus wouldn’t care, they were all misfits and weirdos to some degree and—_

“I’m actually a lesbian?” Alice said, voice pitching high at the end like she wasn’t sure about her own statement.

Pix stared blankly. “I thought you were Serbian.”

Alice choked on thin air.

“Since when are you from _Lesbos_ of all places?” Pix complained, apparently not noticing her reaction.

Alice was coughing so hard she couldn’t even _laugh_ the way she wanted to. Oh hell. Oh _fuck._

Pix noticed, this time.

“Are you okay?” Pix asked. “Do you need me to get the Countess? Or—”

“I’m fine,” Alice managed to say. “Oh my god, that was—you don’t have the frame of reference for why that was funny, but holy _smokes_ , wow, okay.”

She giggled a little, clutching at her stomach, and leaned back against her door. “Lesbian like _Sappho_ , Pix. I like girls, that way, not boys.”

Pix stared back at her for a moment, color slowly entering her cheeks. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

Pix opened her mouth, closed it, looked away. “I… okay, then. Definitely not with Benjamin.”

“Even if I liked boys, I doubt he’d like _me_ that way,” Alice offered. “Great friend, but quite frankly, I’m a lot to put up with.”

“Everyone’s a lot to put up with,” Pix said, snapping like she was working on automatic. “You’re not more than anyone else.”

“I… really am,” Alice said. “You’ve seen me on the bad brain days, Pix. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Pix shook her head. “If you say so…”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice tried to come out. She really did.

People made it so _hard_ though.

o.o.o.o.o

During practice.

“I’m gay,” Alice said.

“You look more angry than happy,” Rassmussin told her flatly.

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You know what, never mind.”

o.o.o.o.o

At a check-up, of sorts.

“I preferred girls,” she hazarded.

“Well, of course,” the Countess said. “The boys are ever so much more irritating and messy. Still, we must put up with them. The Heterodyne Plays _do_ require some Heterodyne Boys.”

“No, that's not—um…” Alice trailed off, thoroughly distracted by the idea. “Uh… I mean… I wouldn't say _no_ to having girls play those roles…”

o.o.o.o.o

During a fitting.

Alice looked at herself in the mirror, admiring the silhouette of the performance outfit and the suggestion it gave. The joke came to mind too quickly to stop. “I'm a lady adventurer.”

Organza snorted. “We live in the wastelands, we're all adventurers.”

Alice stifled a groan of disappointment. _You're not wrong but that's not what I meant._

o.o.o.o.o

At breakfast.

“I like… British Privateers,” Alice offered.

Rivet laughed. “What, first the jagers, now this?”

Alice made the connection a second too late. “Wait, no, this isn't about the danger, this is—stop laughing!”

o.o.o.o.o

During lunch.

“I'm like Sappho!”

Augie blinked at her. “Oh, because you like to write poetry?”

Alice buried her face in her hands. “That too.”

o.o.o.o.o

While striking the set.

“I don't… wear corsets,” Alice said carefully. She’d picked that particular slang up in the last town. It was everywhere in Europa, she knew it was.

Lars glanced at her, frowning in confusion, which was irritating, because she’d been aiming the comment at André. “We know, you complain about them all the time.”

“For the love of god, you _already know what I’m talking about, how could you misinterpret this.”_

Lars blinked at her. He turned to Olga.

Olga stifled a giggle and translated, at which point Lars turned back to Alice, affronted.

“You actually don’t wear corsets though! You say they take too long to put on to be worth it!”

“Still!”

o.o.o.o.o

As a joke while discussing upcoming wagon arrangements for Novi Sad.

“Actually, I sleep on my own side of the bed,” Alice said. “And often alone.”

Pix choked on her tea. So did Olga.

Payne and Abner both looked at her in confusion. Moonsock seemed shocked, Flatmo’s brow was furrowed, and Dame Aedith looked almost excited.

“…don’t most people?” Master Payne finally asked.

“Wow,” Benjamin said quietly. _“Wow.”_

Alice buried her face in her hands. “You people are impossible.”

Yeti snorted from next to her. She looked up at him. _“They’re having me on for a lark, right? I can’t possibly be that bad at communicating.”_

“Can I ask where you heard that one?” Yeti asked.

“Dinreel.”

“Might be outdated,” he said. “Or just specific to Mechanicsburg.”

“Are you going to explain what’s going on?” Abner asked.

“It was a bad joke,” Alice said flatly. “I’m going to go die in a hole now.”

“No you’re not,” Yeti said, pulling her back into her seat.

“Ugh,” Alice said. _“Existence is a nightmare. I don’t know how people put up with it.”_

“You’re being weird again,” Olga told her, as everyone else seemed to stop paying attention. “The worrying kind.”

 _“Being a person is like being trapped in a cage,”_ Alice whined. _“There’s so many rules to being a human being, it’s awful.”_

Olga closed her eyes and tried not to laugh. “As opposed to what?”

Alice blinked at her. _“…a nebulous collection of thoughts, feelings, and memories that isn’t tied to an earthly form but wanders the planes of existence and—”_

“When’s the last time you slept?” Olga interrupted.

Alice didn’t answer that one.

“Okay,” Olga said. “Bedtime. You can try to tell people things tomorrow.”

“Ugggggggggggggggh.”

o.o.o.o.o

As with many nights, the circus was attacked. The road to Novi Sad had been extraordinarily quiet, really, so getting attacked _this close_ to the city was unexpected. Alice had waited for the fighting to die down as usual, only leaving when the sound of weapons ceased, and angry shouting filled the air in its stead.

She would have headed straight for Lars again, if not for a patch of blue highlighted by the fire.

“Dinreel!”

“Hoy, Mizz Nixy!” The woman tipped her hat and grinned with far too many teeth. “Hy’m sorry ‘bout all dot noise! Hy tried to keep de clank avay, but dis vun got avay from me!”

Alice looked past her at the clank, nodded slowly, and then came closer. God dammit, the night was cold. March was only barely warmer than February. “So, fighting clanks in the Wastelands? Bit of a hobby before you go back to get Filly?”

Dinreel shrugged. “Iz fun, ja? Und I get to mek sure hyu and hyu friends izn’t runnink into too much trouble, hyu know.”

“Oh,” Alice said, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “I’m… I figured you might be involved in us having less trouble than usual, since Beograd. Did, um… did you get to see your brother again?”

“Ho yez,” Dinreel said. “He—”

“Excuse me,” Master Payne interrupted. “If one of you would like to _explain?”_

“Um,” Alice said, looking at him, and then at Dinreel. “I mean…”

Dinreel raised an eyebrow, nearly invisible from this distance, but the meaning was clear. It was up to Alice.

“We’re, ah, kind of together?” Alice said, voice pitching so high she was close to squeaking. “Nothing serious, but, um, yeah. It’s. It’s a thing. That’s happening.”

“Together?” Flatmo asked.

Alice blinked at him, looked around at the arrayed circus members, and groaned. It was like… three in the morning or something. She’d say it in English and let someone translate. She was too tired to do this. “Are you seriously… I’m a homosexual. A lesbian. When it comes to romance, I like girls and I don’t like boys and right now that means I’m in a relationship, if… long-distance, and… intermittent? Yeah. An intermittent relationship with Dinreel here. And apparently she’s been running around after the circus to keep us safe, so that’s nice.”

Dinreel’s grin widened, something _very_ smug and self-satisfied there.

(Somewhere a few feet off, Alice heard Benjamin mutter ‘finally’ under his breath.)

Payne rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“This?” The Countess asked him, with a tone that said she’d be having words if she didn’t like the answer.

“One of the company is in a relationship with a wild Jäger,” he said. “It’s… a delicate position to be in, if we pass through a smaller town.”

“Hy’ll stay out of hyu vay ven hyu iz goink through doze vuns,” Dinreel said. “Hy vos taggink along behind hyu so dot Hy could see dot Mizz Nixy vos safe, und Hy know dot vould make theengs verra bad for hyu in de towns vot verra much dun like de wild Jägerkin.”

“That’s… good, I suppose,” Payne said. “And… I do suppose she seems to trust you?”

Dinreel hopped the space left between herself and Alice and put an arm around her waist. “Hy like to theenk so!”

Alice hugged her elbows and looked down at Dinreel with a smile, and then up at Master Payne. “It’s been a nice time so far. She won’t hurt me, or push boundaries. You can trust that much.”

Dinreel made a soft chuffing sound, a shadow of a laugh. Well, yes. There was rather more to it than trust. The sheer physical impossibility had certainly greased the wheels, so to speak. Alice probably would have been at least a little slower to trust if she’d still been scared of all those teeth.

“Ken Hy steal her for a few minutes?” Dinreel asked. She smiled sweetly at the circus. Of course, as a Jäger, that meant that all of the aforementioned teeth were very much on display. Not particularly reassuring, that. “Hy’ll bring her beck, und hyu ken have her vell-rested for hyu show!”

“Of course,” the Countess said, before anyone else could say anything. “Just a few minutes, though. We do need her.”

Dinreel shot off a parody of a salute and turned towards Olga and Alice’s wagon. “Ve ken talk in dere?”

“YOU DEFINITELY CAN!” Olga shouted, and Alice felt her cheeks burn.

Dinreel laughed.

Olga wolf-whistled at them, which had several people telling her to knock it off so they could go back to bed themselves, and also led to Dinreel moving.

More specifically, Dinreel spun Alice around before she could get her bearings, dipped her, and planted a big damn kiss right on her lips before pulling her back upright.

It took a few seconds for reality to catch up to Alice. There were more wolf-whistles, and definitely some laughs.

She buried her face in her hands again. “Oh my _god.”_

“Hyu iz verra cute ven hyu get all red like dot,” Dinreel told her. “But Hy theenk ve should maybe talk?”

Alice nodded. Right. Yes. Talking. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

They entered the wagon.

o.o.o.o.o

Much to Olga’s chagrin, Alice and Dinreel kept to chaste kisses and actual words, and Alice had no spicy stories to tell the next morning no matter _how_ silly her grin was or how much she rambled about Dinreel’s soft fur. Dinreel had exited the wagon a scant half hour after entering it, and Olga had procrastinated on going back to bed _just_ so she could get some gossip on what had gone down. She had to satisfy herself with teasing Alice about how adorably _infatuated_ she seemed instead.


	19. The Backlog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: here be angst, politics, and comics.
> 
> Also that good, good gay shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not joking about the politics. It's mostly one meme and a bunch of surface level stuff, but it does get mentioned. There's also a Nazi mention, mostly because there's some commentary on how Marvel Comics started in large part due to Cap getting written as a way to depopularize Nazi sympathies in the US during WWII.

She danced in Novi Sad.

She _performed on the silks_ in Novi Sad.

Helios and Rassmussin had actually collaborated on the choreography. Alice had danced alone at first, and then they’d dropped the silks. She’d climbed them, performed, and Benjamin had shown up below, grabbed the bottom of the silks, and spun her as she’d posed.

Then, of course, he’d joined her. He was better, absolutely. He’d been training in this for years, and was built for it and loved it to a degree that she couldn’t quite match. She’d done the easy stuff in the background as he showed off, and then they danced together on the ground, including all the acrodance balance tricks Alice had convinced him to try with her. They finished to a surprising amount of applause, then spun away and posed for Helios’s own entrance.

He, of course, outshone them both. The man had a good decade on them both, but he was the circus’s aerialist for a _reason_.

Alice disappeared after Benjamin, following him to the roof of a wagon tucked away in the back of the park. She tucked a coat around herself, the adrenaline-fueled warmth of a performance draining away with time, and tried to gain a little from the bottle of warm apple cider she’d picked up from Yeti at the food stand.

“Hands?” Benjamin asked.

“Good,” Alice said. “I have the gloves.”

He lifted an arm, and she tucked herself under it, leaning her head on his shoulder and watching as Helios’s performance ended, and the Travorić siblings tumbled their way onto the stage and started juggling between backflips.

Alice closed her eyes, letting the sound of the crowd lull her to sleep.

o.o.o.o.o

“Oh,” Olga said, catching Alice’s attention before she even consciously processed it, because that tone in Olga’s voice almost invariably meant imminent trouble.

“Oh?” Alice questioned.

“I know that guy.”

Alice tried to follow Olga’s gaze. “Uh… which one?”

“In the red, by the stairs to the Petrovaradin Fortress,” Olga said. She waved a hand violently in the air over her head. “Hey! Hey, Aleksa!”

Alice twitched.

“Oh no,” Yeti muttered.

“What?” Alice asked him, as quietly as she could. Pix leaned around her to get a good look at Olga’s apparent friend, and then at Yeti.

“I know who that is,” Yeti said, sounding like he was dreading the encounter.

The man came over, with the expression of someone who couldn’t believe their eyes, but very much wanted to.

Alice’s stomach sank a little further.

The man dropped to a knee in front of Olga, taking one of her hands and planting a kiss on it. “My Lady Olga, I had worried you’d never return to our charming city!”

Olga put a hand to her chest as the man rose to his feet, with a smug smile on her face, though she hid the amusement fairly well. “Why, Lord Petrović, I’m sure _dozens_ of lovely girls have passed through since I left. Surely, you’ve found someone else to hang on your arm, no?”

Alice’s eyebrows jumped up higher on her face. She turned to Yeti and whispered. “Lord?”

Yeti made a face and nodded.

“None quite so pretty as you, my dear!” the man exclaimed. “I don’t suppose you’ve reconsidered my proposal?”

Pix made a choking noise.

“I’ve far too much love for my life on the road to settle down,” Olga insisted, turning away a little… and then pausing, turning ever so slightly back to Aleksa, and biting her lip. “You’re sure you haven’t met anyone else?”

Just the slightest hint of hurt and vulnerability, and oh, she was _good._

The lord nodded frantically. “I’ve thought of no face but yours since we last parted.”

“A year? And after such a short acquaintance, oh, you _do_ flatter me,” Olga insisted. “I’m just a fortune teller, not a lady of the court. There are others better suited for your hand.”

“Impossible,” he swore. “Come, let me show you about the shopping district! I’m sure something may catch your eye, and perhaps I will find someplace pretty enough to hook even your interest for more than a breath.”

“So you see me as a challenge?”

“The greatest of them.”

Olga laughed, holding out her arm. “So be it. I’d love to see what you think is enough to charm me, darling.”

They walked off without a second look back, and Alice pinched the bridge of her nose.

“So,” Pix said, and hesitated. “That… that was a lord.”

“Yes,” Yeti said. “Son of the Vojvoda, actually.”

Pix nodded. “And he’s proposed marriage to Olga before.”

“Yes.”

“And apparently plans to do so again.”

“Mm-hm.”

“…she’s _good,”_ Pix said.

“He’s not even the only one,” Yeti admitted. “She’s broken hearts all over our route, I swear.”

“I’m not surprised,” Alice said, lifting her head. _“Not disappointed, even. Eat the rich and all that.”_

Yeti and Pix both turned to stare at her.

She stared back, unimpressed. “You heard me.”

“Are you… actually advocating for cannibalism?” Pix asked carefully.

“Of course not,” Alice said. “It’s just… the short version of many, many other things.”

“The short version of _what?”_ Pix demanded.

Alice blinked at her. _“Economic and political opinions that make much less sense here than they did back home.”_

“That’s worrying,” Yeti told her.

“I do not care,” Alice said, looking at him as blankly as she could. She broke after a few seconds, and grinned and patted him on the arm. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m worrying about it,” Pix told her. “You just said to _eat the rich.”_

“I say many things,” Alice dismissed.

“Yeah, and they’re all equally concerning,” Pix told her.

Alice shrugged. “I am a strange person. Don’t worry about it.”

“Alice.”

“Don’t worry about it!”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice sat in Moxana’s wagon, her back to the gaming table, eyes on the air in front of her.

A few new pages. The appearance of an eldritch creature, Violetta being alive, and some concerning machinery from… from… she’d forgotten his name.

She clung to the pages with that tiny, tenuous thread of connection she could feel. The first few pages started to fade, and she tightened that feathery metaphysical grip on the one that showed Violetta wasn’t dead. Wouldn’t be dead. Shouldn’t be dead.

She reached out with one hand, useless but desperate, and—

Something inside her snapped.

Alice felt something in her chest twist and burn, there and gone and leaving her _shivering_ in a way that felt anything but natural.

She sucked in a breath, hissing.

Cold-empty-static-nothing- _normal-but-not_ and—

The page stayed.

Her hand dropped. So did her jaw.

It didn’t feel like she was desperately trying to cling to a rope made of cotton candy and smoke anymore. It felt… solid. She couldn’t describe it properly, and thinking of _how_ to describe it felt a little like standing at the top of a slippery slope towards dissociation again, but the page was there.

Moxana’s hand landed on her shoulder and squeezed.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” Alice whispered. She bit her bottom lip and thought about the last page, and it fuzzed into being behind and a little to the left of the current one.

Was there an existing OS to this magic? Or was it based on her own subconscious expectations for what would be a natural way to work with a viewing system?

She raised her right hand and twitched it sideways, small and quick, like she was trying to mime dismissing an idea.

The images shifted. The last page came to the forefront, and the one displaying Violetta slipped to the right and back, another fuzzing into existence on the other side.

Okay. Okay okay okay.

She could view pages. She could swipe through to the next or last. She could… experiment with this?

Alice reached across her body with her right hand, far to the left, and then swung it back as fast as she could.

She was imagining the ticking noise of the wheel of fortune as dozens of pages swept past, and her mind idly thought of the way she’d read manga on one site, just an entire chapter per page, everything end to end, and—

The pages glitched in front of her, hanging distant in the air, and suddenly she was looking at Violetta again. The other pages were above and below, clear as day but fading out as they moved further away from the page immediately before her, and ready for scrolling.

Okay.

…right, then.

She tentatively waved a hand in front of her, dismissing the entire thing.

She wanted to remember the name of the orange-haired guy with the funky goggles.

She held the concept of him in her mind, and swiped up.

An old page. Wooster introducing Zeetha to Lord Snackleford, the guy that took care of the day-to-day running of the dome. No options for forward or back, but that was okay. Maybe if she thought about the old site, then—

Buttons. A dropdown menu with scene titles. A faded, translucent blue background and other framing.

Alice sucked in a sharp breath, eyes prickling.

It… it looked like a site, like _the_ Girl Genius site, and it was… it was just…

Moxana’s arms curled closer. She must have been leaning over pretty far to do that, Alice figured. She twisted around to stare the Muse in the face.

“Can you see them?”

Moxana closed her eyes and shook her head.

“Okay,” Alice said, turning to face the still-hanging pages. “O…okay, then.”

Right. She could access old pages. Flip through them. Could she compare them?

No keyboard. No Ctrl+C. Maybe if she just…

She held her hand out towards the page again and made a grasping motion. She pulled back, and a ghostly afterimage came with it. She managed to ‘deposit’ it to the side, and then… yes, okay, a pinching motion would help shrink it. That was familiar enough. The previous pages stayed in front of her, and she swept everything to the side again. With rapidly surer movements, she tried again, running through the comic at a speed to pick up the first appearance of every Muse so far. An errant thought had even brought up a copy of the half-remembered Muse cards from that game that the Foglios had made a deck for, the… duo? No, Pairs! That one. She had a half-dozen pages hanging in the air about her, proof that she could hold images up to cross-reference if she needed.

She sat back and considered the page still in front of her, the Muse fresco from TPU.

Some of what she’d done so far had simply been by thought, and some had only responded to motions. She could access previous pages, and there was something approximating a search function, though that one really was just by thought alone. She got updates. She could effectively copy-paste, or open different tabs, though she wasn’t sure that would last beyond one ‘session.’ She could even access _some_ of the not quite canon materials.

Alice considered that, and hesitantly attempted to access one of the Reddit AMAs.

Nothing.

Othar’s twitter?

Ah. Okay. She could access that, even if it was rather… static. Essentially a screenshot, completely uninteractive beyond scrolling.

(She ignored the roiling in her gut at that. Of course the internet was out of her reach. She just had the medium she needed to remember for her job here.)

(Granted, the internet would have been helpful for that, too.)

The wiki was also beyond her access, unsurprisingly, but every time she thought of something to search up, the relevant page jumped up before her. Alice kept using the muses as her reference point, aware of Moxana’s steady presence at her back, unseeing of just what she was doing but still there and approving. Hopefully. Her hands were still on Alice’s shoulders, at least.

Alice took a breath. “Moment of truth, I guess.”

She closed her eyes, focused, and then flicked her hand up as she opened them.

The first page of the Storm King prologue met her eyes. She’d read _Agatha H. and the Clockwork Princess._ Most of that had been on a road trip to—never mind. Bad thoughts lay that way. Road trip and lunch breaks. She’d started on _Voice of the Castle,_ but never finished before she’d been yanked. With a swipe of her hand, the first page to _that_ greeted her as well. A flick, and the pages started scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

She paused them, and read a few lines.

She’d never gotten that far.

This was new.

This was helpful.

This was information she hadn’t had before.

Okay.

…she had a lot of reading to do.

o.o.o.o.o

“Hyu know,” the voice came from the trees, and Alice tried not to show her surprise at the sudden noise. “Hy theenk hyu’ve been getteenk _much_ better.”

Alice tilted her head back and smiled as Dinreel dropped to the ground and joined her on the log. She then squeaked as Dinreel darted in for a kiss and then leaned back with a grin that, as catlike as it was, probably would have been more at home on Dimo’s face.

“…you surprised me.”

“Ho yez, Hy’m _verra_ good at dot,” Dinreel said. “Iz not a bad surprize, yez?”

Alice searched Dinreel’s face for a few moments, and then ducked her head with a smile. “Yeah. It’s a good surprise. I thought you’d be heading down for Mechanicsburg by now.”

Dinreel shrugged. “Filly von’t be avake for a veek und a heff. I ken delay until hyu circus is ready to moof.”

“Oh.”

“Hey,” Dinreel said, nudging Alice with her elbow. “Hyu like beink up high, ja?”

“Er, yes.”

“Hyu vant to sit in de tree? Iz a beet more qviet und private.”

She had the audacity to bounce her eyebrows, and Alice laughed.

“Well, it’s not like I’m going to be at any risk of injury,” Alice mused, and then snorted. _And there’s certainly the joke of it._

Dinreel scooped her up into her arms, bridal style, and Alice tried not to squeak as she jumped one-two-three times up between two large trees to seat them both thirty feet off the ground on a large, thick branch.

“Iz goot?”

“Yep,” Alice said, catching her breath and rearranging herself a little to find a comfortable way to sit. “It’s good.”

“Hy’m glad to hear eet.”

“Right. So, you said you’d be going off with Filly soon, right?” Alice tilted her head, mulling the thought over. “What’s your usual search pattern?”

“Iz further East,” Dinreel said. “Ve iz de vuns vat look along de coast of de Black Sea.”

Alice tried to remember what, exactly, was there in her own world. Her grasp of geography had always been shaky, and the words escaped her. “Probably not anywhere near our summer route, then.”

“Afraid not,” Dinreel said. “But hyu vill be seeing Da Boyz, yez? Mine brudder end dose eedeeots vot he gots to look after.”

“Oh, they’re clever in their own way,” Alice said quietly. “Bit silly, but I guess that’s the easy way to get people to gloss over the scary stuff.”

“Like hyu do?” Dinreel asked, leaning in with a cheesy grin.

Alice felt her smile become fixed. “There’s a lot of double-think going on. I know what the Jägers used to do. If I think about that too hard, I’ll just upset myself. If I think about how old you are, that will probably make me thought spiral, too. So I remember the goofs from canon and remember how nice you are to me, and remind myself that the rules in this world are very, very different from my own.”

“Hyu theenk hyu’ll mind is goink to change, den?” Dinreel asked. “Iz a beeg theeng to change hyu theenkeeng on.”

Alice looked up past the leaves and into the sky, biting her lip. At length, she took a breath. “This world isn’t going to change on my whims or my morals. I _want_ to fight all the injustices I see, because that’s the kind of person I used to be, but I can’t. I can’t pretend this world fits my views, or that it ever can. So… hopefully, I’m going to adjust to fit it. I don’t want to lose myself in the process, but I’ll never get anything done if I don’t pick my battles, right?”

“Und hyu battles before?” Dinreel prodded.

Alice hesitated. “I was… it’s… my world before was more organized. Politically, I mean. There weren’t sparks, or really anyone who qualifies as a construct, so things were… different. Europa currently subsists primarily as city-states, and more recently under the Wulfenbach Empire system. My world had established countries, some of them thousands of years old, which is something I’ve only really seen with England, here, and even England doesn’t have the established democratic and republic systems that were the standard back home. The random violence and scientific crimes against humanity were… not nonexistent, but rarer, less accepted, and different. I could talk about… about domestic violence statistics, or legislation that prevented access to safe abortions, or racialized police brutality, or the hypocrisy of having a country founded on freedom that didn’t illegalize slavery until almost a century later, and then capitalism that had… that had companies founded on domestic soil using it abroad where there was less legislature to prevent such human rights abuses, and—”

“Breathe.”

Alice sucked in a breath. “I wasn’t a _fighter,_ is the thing. I wasn’t the kind of person who really went to marches or protests. I was scared, or ill, or just… a coward, really. But I spread information. I argued with people when I could. I donated when I had the cash to spare. I researched candidates before it was time to vote. It was… I didn’t do much, but I did what I could. And now, here, I’m terrified to even do that because I don’t know what’s really worth arguing first. I dislike the death penalty, but I can’t say I’d cry if… certain people who are plot relevant were killed for their crimes. I don’t like the idea of monarchies or inherited positions as head of state, but it’s not like a democracy can be installed with the way Sparks are, so I can’t really argue that monarchism is at least _functional_ now, and I just…”

“It sounds like hyu iz metaphorcially lost in de woods without a compass. You vant advice for dot or do hyu vant sum more hugs?”

Alice looked at the ground so far below her, mulling over her options, but leaned into Dinreel’s side. She closed her eyes as strong arms wrapped around her, and took another breath. “I don’t want to lose who I am. I care about… about a _lot,_ and there’s so much going on in this world that I wish I could fix, but I’m just one person, and even being a Dreen Gift doesn’t really give me the influence to do anything. It’s like… triage on a mountain of human rights abuses. And construct rights abuses. And clank rights abuses. And… I want to help. I also don’t want to be the weird foreigner that comes into a new place thinking she knows best and refusing to take local norms and traditions into account. Nobody needs the white savior trope, right? I mean, it’s Europa, so I guess that doesn’t really apply since it’s majority white people anyway, but like… you know what I mean. I can’t just assume I know better than the locals, even if I know that some things _aren’t_ okay. So I need to adapt. I need to localize. I mean, Timmie did it, so I can too.”

Dinreel passed a hand down Alice’s upper arm, and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek. “Who’s Timmie?”

“She…” Alice said, and her breath caught. She felt a shudder work its way up from her core. It wasn’t the Dreen. It was just… the grief. Again. “She was a friend of mine, before. I disappeared from our world first, but she was… she was added here before I was. She died two hundred years ago. I only… I only just found out a few weeks ago, so… I’m still dealing with that.”

Alice didn’t fight it when Dinreel picked her up and pulled her into her lap. She did wonder what was up, and opened her eyes in time to see Dinreel pulling out… an ocarina?

Dinreel shrugged at the questioning look. “Eef hyu vant to talk, ve ken. Eef hyu don’t… maybe a song?”

Alice considered that, for a long moment, and then took a breath and nodded. “A song. I don’t… I don’t think I want to keep talking about this right now.”

She made herself comfortable, awkwardly slipping back out of Dinreel’s arms so she wasn’t so close to the ocarina that sound would hurt her hears, and then proceeded to lay down with her head in Dinreel’s lap, which did at least draw a laugh out of the Jäger in question. The branch still wasn’t exactly comfortable, but she’d deal.

There was something… very calming about the music. She couldn’t pinpoint it at first, just let the sound wash over her, and then rolled over to look up at Dinreel and ask, “You said you were an art spark, right?”

Dinreel blinked down at her, and then grinned. “Ho yez. Hy’m glad hyu remembered.”

Alice nodded slowly. “And… was there anything sparky about that music just now?”

“A leedle,” Dinreel said. “Sometheenk to mek hyu feel better, ja?”

Alice nodded again. “Okay. Please ask next time? Or warn me, I guess? It’s… I appreciate it, but I’d like the warning.”

“Hyu iz not a beeg fan of de sparky stuff?”

Alice shrugged, looking past Dinreel at the sky. “It’s… new. It’s odd. If I know what’s going on, and why, and a little bit of how, I can accept it. If it comes out of the blue, I’m… less okay.”

“Hokay,” Dinreel said. “Hy ken do dot.”

Propping herself back up to sitting, Alice leaned in to look a little closer at the ocarina. “You know, I only really know what that is because of a video game from back home.”

“Oh?”

“I never played it, but it was a plot point, I think,” Alice said.

“Heh,” Dinreel huffed out a laugh. “Hyu know, Lia said sometheeng like dot, de first time she saw it.”

“The Dreen Gift that became a Jäger, right?” Alice asked. “I hope I get to meet her, at some point.”

“Andris  iz vorking on eet,” Dinreel assured her. “Might not be for a vhile, but… eet iz goink to heppen.”

“Awesome,” Alice said. She looked at the ground again, and then shook her head. “Sorry. I think… can we talk about something else? Not—not other Dreen Gifts. I keep thinking about stuff that just… makes me really sad, and—”

“Tell me hyu favorite story.”

Alice blinked. “What… what kind of story?”

Dinreel propped her chin on her fist, smiling with those too-sharp teeth. “Chust vun vot hyu like.”

Alice opened her mouth and stalled out, looking down and away. “Um. Uh. I guess I could… talk about Marvel Loki?”

Dinreel gestured for her to continue.

“I mean, it’s… a long story. And it was originally told with a whole lot of visuals, since it was a comic, and the actual bit that I’m into had three major series dedicated to it, and appearances in other series, and a prequel of sorts, except that was really just part of one of the post-Civil War crossover events that were meant to drum up interest for other series, and—” Alice cut herself off. “How much do you know about the way comics worked in my world?”

“A bit,” Dinreel said. “Hy dunno much about de details, but Lia sed dat dere were two beeg companies, und Hy theenk she sed dot de Norse Gods were in one of dem.”

Alice nodded sharply. “Right. Um. I guess I can give you some industry background? Maybe? And then segue into what the actual plotline I was into was about.”

Dinreel leaned in, eyes alight. “Hyu know dot much?”

“I…” Alice gave her an unsure grin. “Well, I don’t remember everything, but reading about this sort of thing was a hobby of mine. I definitely can talk about the political climate that led to Marvel and all the Cap comics from the forties.”

“Ho yez, Hy’d _luff_ to hear about dot,” Dinreel said, slipping her ocarina away. “Deed this ‘Cap’ come first? Und Marvel?”

“I think… I think DC was releasing Batman comics in the thirties?” Alice hazarded a guess. “So they came first. Granted, Batman was based on Zorro, and I think Zorro was based on the Scarlet Pimpernel, but then again all fiction is derivative, so…”

She shook her head. “Right. Let me start with Batman as a baseline for superhero comics, then World War II and how it popularized serials among soldiers and led specifically to Cap as a way to argue against commonly held antisemitism in the US, and then general development of Marvel during the next few decades, general shape of the industry in my time, and then Loki stuff.”

Dinreel leaned in even closer, ears perked, even going so far as to pull out a notebook. “Hyu iz forgetting dot I’m an art spark, Mizz Nixy. Hy am _verra_ interested een all dis.”

Alice’s breath caught in her throat. “Okay. Infodump time ahoy. Um. I really, really can’t promise I’m accurate on everything. I don’t exactly have Wikipedia on hand.”

“Iz hokay,” Dinreel said. “Hy’m pretty sure Hy’m still goink to learn _lots.”_

“…right,” Alice said. “Okay. From the Golden Age of comics to… explain the Gillen-to-Ewing Loki stuff. I can do this.”

And she did! Mostly. She tripped herself up a few times, went back to things she’d already said and second-guessed the accuracy, derailed herself to talk about how one plotline would have consequences a few decades later, compared the Marvel multiverse and flexible timeline versus DC’s soft reboots, and managed to spend probably at least ten minutes explaining the Maximoff family tree with the rotating cast of fathers and House of M and the whole _thing_ with Billy and Tommy.

Dinreel didn’t ever seem to lose even a moment’s interest. It was flattering.

Alice finally wound around to explaining the nature of Marvel events, starting with Civil War, glossing over Secret Invasion, and ignoring most of SIEGE, save for the very important part where Loki died because Doom told him he was getting predictable. Then came, of course, Gillen’s run of Journey into Mystery, and Young Avengers Volume Two, and Loki: Agent of Asgard.

“—and then they brought Loki back after Secret Wars, which had its own mess of Lokis, mostly the pretty transmisogynistic decision to include Lady Loki as the villain of the A-Force miniseries, but anyway. They brought back Loki afterwards, being written by… god, I can’t even remember his name. Aaron? Jason Aaron? I think that’s it. Anyway, he was writing Loki in two parallel series with conflicting characterization, and Loki was even making cameos in other series? But I can’t say I understood what was going _on_ , even, because—look, I know, I _know_ , that the structure of companies like Marvel and DC means that characterization gets mangled as characters get passed around and adapted and all that, but the fact that this was the _same author?_ I’m just. I’m still confused. I did like what they did with Leah, but they didn’t actually bring her back after packing her off to search for Ilyana, despite bringing back Thori, so I guess I’m just going to be frustrated for eternity since I never got to see how that ended and now that I’m here, I never will.”

“Hyu _really_ luffed these books,” Dinreel said. “Hy ken eemagine how annoying eet eez to neffer see how it ended.”

Alice shrugged. “I can imagine my own endings.”

“Hyu wanted to write for dem?” Dinreel asked.

“…a lot,” Alice admitted. “But I was never really going to get to that point. I had trouble sticking with one project for very long, and I don’t know how well my style would have meshed with the rest of the company. Might’ve done something independent eventually, with Image or Aftershock or something, but… nah. Wasn’t that dedicated, really.”

“Vell,” Dinreel said. “Eef hyu write sometheeng soon, Hy’d like to see it.”

Alice smiled at her. “Maybe when we see each other again in the fall? I’ll probably have _something_ written by then.”

“Ho yez, iz a date!” Dinreel agreed, then leaned in and pressed her lips to Alice’s. She pulled back with that same wide grin. “Und eef hyu don’t, Hy ken chust ask hyu about dose ‘movie adaptations’ hyu sed happened.”

“I have… opinions on that too,” Alice admitted, tucking her hair behind one ear. “Sorry, I just have a lot to say on this and—”

“Und Hy like to hear it! No need to be sorry,” Dinreel assured her. She leaned in again for another kiss. “Hy’m tellink hyu, I like eet _verra_ much. Hy gets to hear about stories from anodder vorld! Und hyu like to talk about how und vhy dey happened, end hyu got angry und ranty vhen hyu talked about doze ‘Nazi’ fucks, und eet vosn’t a spark rant, but eet vos _verra_ fun to vatch.”

Alice could feel her cheeks burning up. “That’s… thank you. A lot. I get worried about boring people by talking for too long about too much.”

“Iz a special interest of mine,” Dinreel said. “Und vun vot hyu gots, too, Hy theenk. Iz a goot match.”

Alice ducked her head. Again. “Um. Yeah. Great match.”

Dinreel’s finger came under her chin, coaxing her to look up again. Alice saw it coming, and closed her eyes as Dinreel’s lips caught hers, this time with purpose.

Okay. Okay. She could do this. Okay, _teeth_ , but they weren’t as much of a problem as she’d expected, and—

Well, a lot of kissing happened. It didn’t last as long as the infodump had, frankly, but at least when Alice’s hindbrain decided that kissing was boring and it was time for cuddles, Dinreel didn’t seem to mind her just burying her face in a fuzzy shoulder and idly playing with those long blue ears.

“They’re so _soft,”_ Alice whispered.

“Thenk hyu,” Dinreel said, with clearly fake solemnity. “Oh! Hy almost forgot to say, Hy saw hyu do the big ribbon dancing de other day! The silk theeng!”

Alice sat back up again. “Oh?”

“Ho yez, dot’s ektually vot Hy came here to talk to hyu about,” Dinreel said, grinning. “Hy liked it verra much! Hyu iz verra good!”

“Ah, not as good as—mmph!”

Dinreel pulled away from the kiss, smirking. “Dun compare hyuself to de boyz vot’s been doink this for years. Hyu iz newer, but hyu iz still _verra good._ Be proud!”

Alice opened her mouth, closed it, and then shook her head. “Okay.”

Dinreel pecked her on the lips again, holding it just a little longer than necessary, and—

“Oi!”

Alice pulled away and looked over to see someone standing below them.

“…hi, Olga!”

“As nice as it is to see you enjoying yourself, the show’s going to start soon!” Olga called up. “You need to get ready!”

Alice looked at Dinreel and shrugged. “Duty calls?”

Dinreel laughed. She tucked her hands under Alice and slid forward, dropping them both to the ground with a surprisingly lack of discomfort.

“Oof.”

“Please tell me you’re okay,” Olga said.

“I’m fine,” Alice said, unwrapping herself form Dinreel. “Um. I’ll see you before you head off to Mechanicsburg, right?”

“Ho yez, at least tomorrow,” Dinreel said. “Hy’ll heff to check de weather. Eef de storms come een, I’ll heff to leave early.”

“Right,” Alice said. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Dinreel smiled and grabbed one last kiss, loping off before Alice could even respond. “See hyu!”

“…see ya,” Alice said. She steeled herself and turned to Olga. “Hi.”

Olga’s smile was nothing short of concerning. “So… was there lots of kissing?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“I’m your roommate and one of your best friends,” Olga said. “I want to know because I care.”

“And so you can gossip,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, there was kissing.”

“Was there more?”

“Absolutely not,” Alice said, making a face. “We were in a _tree,_ that’s uncomfortable enough already.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Olga allowed. “But… seriously, tell me. How did you handle the teeth?”

_“Olga!”_

“I just want to know!”

o.o.o.o.o

“You’re pouting.”

“I’m not.”

“You _are,”_ Pix insisted. She kicked lightly at the leg of Alice’s chair. “You’re upset because your scary girlfriend left.”

“She’s not scary.”

Pix favored her with a dead-eyed stare. “She’s a _wild Jäger.”_

“Yeah, but like…” Alice gestured vaguely. “She looks like a bunny.”

“She’s not a fluffy bunny, Alice.”

Alice shrugged. “Fluffy to me.”

“That’s not—no, you know what, I’m not having this conversation again,” Pix decided. “Drink your damn coffee.”

“It’s a hot chocolate.”

“I _hate_ you and everything you stand for.”

“You got that line from me, Pix.”

“Don’t care. Using it. Deal.”

“You got that from me too.”

“I don’t care, Alice.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alice gets a few things wrong because it's been eight months, so. That's a thing.


	20. The Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice doesn't really want people judging her for what she writes, but Olga is... determined.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of sex mentions in this chapter. Also a fairly intense anxiety attack, and some references to minor self harm. Due to the oblique phrasing, it's been pointed out to me that the references to self-harm can also be interpreted as references to suicide.

“You!”

Alice screamed and flailed, falling backwards out of her seat.

Her dinner spilled over her stomach.

Olga was quiet for a few moments, and then said, “Sorry.”

“You know she does this,” Benjamin said. “You know she’s twitchy and falls a lot. You know she’s easy to startle. And yet.”

“And yet!” Olga said. “I’ll help you wash that up later. Right now, there are more important things.”

“Like _what?”_ Alice demanded, sitting up and wiping at her chest. Ugh, she really hoped this wasn’t going to stain.

“Like this!” Olga declared, holding up one of the journals that Alice had given her to read over a few days earlier. Contrary to what she’d told Dinreel, Alice _had_ written a few things so far, just nothing she really felt comfortable sharing with a centuries-old art Spark. Her barely-older roommate who had a thing for penny sparklies and kept poking her about the stories? Much easier.

“That is… not a journal I feel comfortable talking about in public, Olga.”

“No matter!” Olga declared. She pointed at Alice. “I say thee nay!”

“What are you talking about?” Benjamin demanded.

“Yeah… I’d like to know too,” Lars added. Yeti made an agreeing noise from beside him, and Pix… well, she _pretended_ she wasn’t interested, but everyone knew she was.

“She’s an erotica Spark,” Olga said. “I’m sure of it.”

Alice choked on thin air.

So did everyone else.

“I am _not,”_ Alice said.

“You are!”

“I am not a Spark at all!” Alice insisted.

 _“I call bullshit._ ”

Alice wrinkled her nose. _“That sounds weird when you say it. Stop using the slang I gave you.”_

Olga stuck her tongue out at Alice. “No.”

“What just happened?” Lars whispered to Yeti.

“Olga said something she probably picked up from Alice in English,” Yeti said. “Olga, Alice has shown… very few, if any, really Sparky tendencies. I’m pretty sure she’s not a Spark of any kind, especially if she says she’s not.”

“I’m pretty sure nobody would care if she was,” Pix said, with an arched eyebrow in Alice’s direction.

Alice waited for anyone to comment on that. Despite a few awkward looks, nobody did.

“Okay, listen,” Alice said. “I am… I have written for many years. I started writing very young, and I read even more. I will say that I am a good writer, because I have practiced, a _lot_ , but I am not a Spark.”

Olga crossed her arms, face set mulishly, and then held the journal out at Yeti. “Read it.”

 _“Oh my god,”_ Alice groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Why.”

“I don’t think she’s okay with me reading this, Olga,” Yeti said.

Alice picked her head up and stared past everyone, up and away into the treetops and away from anyone else’s eyes. “…you can read it.”

“Can I?” Pix asked.

“Fine,” Alice said. “Not Benjamin or Lars. It’s in English.”

“I figured,” Lars said.

 _“And don’t… judge me,”_ Alice muttered. _“No making fun of me based on what I wrote.”_

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Pix said, voice dripping with insincerity. She even gave Alice a grin with her hand to her chest.

“I promise nothing,” Yeti said. “But I’ll try to at least keep my thoughts to myself.”

Alice buried her face in her hands again. Olga took a seat next to her, slung an arm over her shoulders, and said, “You know, we could market those.”

“No.”

“Translate them first, of course, and I’d be taking a cut because of that bit, but these are good enough to sell, Alice.”

“So are penny sparklies. It is not a sign of, um…” Alice snapped the fingers of one hand, trying to remember the word in Romanian. “Quality! Yes. It is not a sign of quality.”

“Psssht, you’re better than those,” Olga dismissed. “They’re mass-producing with zero care for quality and it’s all about sensationalism.”

“Right,” Alice said. “Because erotica is any better.”

“You really have a thing for monster girls,” Pix commented.

Alice looked over to where Pix was leaning into Yeti’s space to read the journal. Pix looked over and raised her eyebrows, and then went back to reading the journal.

Alice clapped her hands to her face and dragged them down, groaning.

“Is this what you write when you sit on top of the carriage?” Lars asked.

“Quiet.”

“You write this in public, then,” Benjamin said.

“Stoooooop.”

“She does,” Olga said. “She has a really specific expression when she does it, too. It’s not really a grin but it looks really smug and, I swear, vindictive.”

“Why do you pay that much attention to her face?” Benjamin asked.

“I pay attention to everyone’s faces,” Olga dismissed. “Way easier to do cold readings if I stay in practice using the troupe.”

“Right, because that’s not creepy or anything,” Lars said.

“It’s not all she writes, at least,” Olga offered. “She wrote this really creepy thing about an undead faerie queen in a battle with a clank goddess.”

Alice groaned. _“I got like half of that plot from the Manchester Gods arc of Journey into Mystery, just… twisted the genre a lot and removed the Loki POV.”_

“There was horrified introspection on being broken down and rusting to pieces in the woods as the body of a dead goddess decomposed just a few feet away,” Olga said with relish. “It was a whole _thing.”_

Everyone turned to look at Alice. She shrugged. _“I like writing angsty horror sometimes.”_

“There was the wing thing—”

_“Planning stages.”_

“—the baby construct with the toy fox—”

_“Inane and pretentious.”_

“—the zombie that was trying to be a doctor—”

_“I don’t know enough about hospitals to make that one work.”_

“—and that whole death goddess one.”

_“Yeah, that’s just a long-standing thing for me.”_

Lars smiled and nodded. “Alice, I didn’t understand a word you were saying. Olga, that sounds… weird.”

“A lot of it is!” Olga said cheerily. “But I’m getting practice reading English, and most of it’s pretty interesting, even if it’s not the kind of writing I’m used to seeing.”

“Oh?” Benjamin asked.

“I don’t know how to explain it, really,” Olga said, tapping her chin and frowning at the sky. “It just feels… like it’s being written from a different place? And the humor is different.”

Pix made a strange noise, leaning away from Yeti and the journal.

Yeti was still staring at the page, eyes wide and no longer moving across the page.

“Oh, you finished the opening scene,” Olga said. She was smirking. Great.

“Okay,” Yeti said. He closed the book, thumb keeping his place, and closed his eyes. “Give me a second.”

“I don’t get it,” Lars said. “What changed?”

“Apparently it takes a few pages before actually getting to the sex,” Olga told him. “More than that, actually.”

 _“Can we please not?”_ Alice begged.

“Open it back up!” Pix demanded, glaring at the book. “We started it, and now we have to finish it!”

“You really don’t,” Alice said.

She was summarily ignored.

“Wait, I thought you said you didn’t want to do anything sexual? Even with girls?” Lars looked even more confused than he sounded. “But…”

Alice shrugged. “Doing things and writing about doing things is different. I do not kill people, but I write about pirates. I do not raise the dead, but I write about people who can. I do not change the world to what I want, but I like to write about goddesses. That is what fiction is.”

“Okay,” Lars said. “But sex is different.”

Alice blinked at him. “If I read enough, I can write it.”

“Uh.”

Alice grinned at him, humorless. “I read a lot.”

“…oh.”

“A _lot.”_

“Right.”

Olga snickered.

“I can tell,” Pix said. She and Yeti both had their heads tilted, with wide eyes and fixed expressions as they read.

Alice rolled her eyes, trying not to show off her discomfort. “And I have done things before, it is just never fun.”

“… _oh,”_ Lars said, looking incredibly uncomfortable.

“Not like that,” Alice said. “My body just… is strange. It does not feel things, sometimes. Sex wastes time.”

“Let’s not talk about that,” Lars said nervously.

Benjamin made a face and looked at him. “Two of your friends are reading a third friend’s erotica.”

“Lesbian monster erotica,” Olga clarified.

“Right,” Benjamin said. “So how is a discussion of what is, as far as I remember, a medical situation, more uncomfortable than that?”

“…they’re your friends too,” Lars pointed out.

“That’s not relevant.”

“You said they’re my friends, but they’re your friends too, Benji.”

“Don’t call me that,” Benjamin said. “And yes, but only against my better judgement.”

“Rude,” Olga said.

“I don’t care, Olga.”

Alice wrapped her arms around her knees and looked away instead of answering.

For a few minutes, the only sound was turning pages, the occasional whisper of ‘ _wait, what does that mean?’_ and ‘ _people can DO that?!’_ from Pix and Yeti, and Olga’s impatiently bouncing leg.

“There’s no more,” Pix finally said, flipping a page back and forth. “It—it’s not done?”

“Well, no,” Alice said. “Not even the first draft is done.”

Pix frowned. “But I want to see how it ends.”

“So do I,” Alice said flatly.

Pix stared at her and then turned to Olga. “It’s not just me, right? She’s being mean?”

“Yeeeeeah,” Olga said, drawing the word out and looking like she was no longer enjoying herself. “I made the same mistake.”

“Sorry,” Alice said, cringing a little as everyone either looked at her or very pointedly didn’t meet her eyes. “I am… _I am very quickly annoyed by requests for more stories when I’ve already written something. I was previously part of some large writing communities with a wide audience, but it was all voluntary. Nobody was paid. Many people felt entitled to demand more works from me and other writers without actually providing any responses to the stories, as was generally expected, or even being polite about it. Every ‘update soon!’ comment, or when they left the same four-word comment that could have been applied to just about anything and felt completely devoid of actual interest or care, was just… draining. I did that for ten years. I got those comments for ten years. Any variation of ‘update soon’ just immediately grates on my nerves.”_

Lars and Benjamin looked to Yeti for a translation.

Pix crossed her arms and huffed. “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

“You weren’t,” Alice said, scratching the back of her head and looking away. “I snapped for very little reason. I try not to do that. Just… please do not expect things of me. Or… or act like I need to make more of something, something I do for fun, just because someone else wants it.”

“How often did this happen?” Benjamin asked.

“…every time I shared? Even when I said that a story was done.”

“Which was…” Yeti prompted.

Alice shrugged. “It changed. Sometimes there was a month where I wrote nothing. Sometimes I wrote over forty chapters in under three months.”

“…why?”

“There were people who were nice,” Alice said. “And it was fun.”

She stalled, and then shook her head. “I really am sorry for being mean, Pix. You didn’t… _you didn’t deserve that.”_

“Apology accepted.”

“Anyway,” Yeti said, clapping his hands together. “I’m not sure if I’d say _Sparky_ erotica, but it’s… definitely imaginative.”

“Near Sparky, if not Sparky,” Pix said.

“Yeah, if all I knew was the writing, I’d say it could go either way,” Yeti said. “But I know you, and you haven’t really shown any other signs.”

“Maybe that’ll change once you read one of the more… edited stories,” Olga said. “A _lot_ can change in the process.”

Alice shook her head. “I’m not a Spark.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

o.o.o.o.o

“So, Pix knows,” Payne sighed. “Well, we knew it would only be a matter of time.”

“She doesn’t seem to mind, if that helps,” Yeti offered. “Mostly she seemed annoyed at Alice about it. As far as I can tell, they talked about it, and Alice doesn’t believe her.”

“…it’s been _eight months,”_ the Countess said. “She _must_ know by now!”

Yeti’s shoulders crept up to his ears. “I really can’t tell, Countess. She doesn’t _seem_ to notice anything. She might just be in denial.”

“Maybe she decided that she wouldn’t bring it up until one of us did?” Abner suggested. “I mean, look at how long it took for her to tell us she liked girls.”

“Or she figured it out and thought it would be funny to see how long it took for someone to confront her about it,” Yeti said.

“She’s not like that,” Payne said, shaking his head.

“With all due respect, sir, I know her a fair bit better than you do,” Yeti said. “It’s definitely an option.”

“I trust you on that,” the Countess said, interrupting Payne before he could say more himself. “I find it hard to imagine she’d miss it, though.”

“We’re good at hiding it,” Abner pointed out. “And it took her ages to learn the language at all, and most of her time, especially earlier, was with Olga and Lars and Benjamin. The only Sparks she really regularly spent time with were Rassmussin and Yeti, here.”

“And we’ve both been hiding it for long enough that we could probably spend years in a city with no one noticing,” Yeti said. “Moonsock and Dame Aedith are the ones I’d be more worried about, but she only really spends time with Moonsock when practicing, and she barely crosses paths with Dame Aedith.”

“So Alice might not know, might know and not care, might know and be hiding that she knows because she thinks it’s funny, and might know and be in denial for—what was the reasoning, again?” Abner asked.

“Half-certain she’s a construct and had some really bad experiences with Sparks before,” Yeti said.

“Right, trauma,” Abner said.

“It would certainly fit the profile of how frequently her mental health seems to falter, if she’s running into things that would trigger a negative spiral of sorts,” the Countess mused. “A way to protect herself, I suppose.”

“If it helps, I don’t think it’s that one,” Yeti said. “Olga accused her of being a literary Spark earlier today—”

“Lars said that Olga was saying ‘erotica Spark,’ last I heard,” Abner interrupted.

“She’s _what?”_ The Countess demanded.

“She’s not! Probably, I mean…” Yeti shrugged. “I read some of what she’s written. Some of the less intense things, too. She’s good, but nothing that can’t be explained by the practice she claims she’s had, and I believe her on that. The only thing that really stood out as _bad_ was her handwriting; the actually body of work was pretty good.”

“Okay, so she’s not a Spark,” Abner said. “At least, probably not.”

“Potential Spark, maybe,” Payne said.

“Olga thinks we could market what she’s written, with a translation or two,” Yeti said.

“Let’s put a pin in that,” the Countess said. “But her reaction wasn’t anything that had to do with Sparks themselves being a problem, just that she herself wasn’t one?”

“I think she was mostly annoyed that all the years of practice were being held up as Spark stuff,” Yeti said. “Like we were dismissing all the effort she put in or something.”

“That… would make sense,” Abner said. “But she definitely has no issue with Sparks?”

“How many times have you even seen her acknowledge that Sparks _exist?”_ Yeti asked. “Or heard her say the word?”

The seconds ticked by as Abner processed that.

“She doesn’t really bring Sparks up much, does she?” the Countess mused.

“Yeah,” Yeti said. “That’s part of why it’s hard to tell.”

“Didn’t Chef Taki almost brain her with a calming pie?” Abner asked. “Three times, at least?”

“She yelled at him,” Payne said. “It _was_ overtly Sparklike behavior.”

“But she didn’t every acknowledge it, did she,” the Countess sighed.

Yeti shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“…we really need to talk to her,” she decided. “Hieronymus?”

“Before Timișoara,” Payne decided. “And Pix as well, I suppose, if only to clear the air.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Again.”

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The beat passed through her mind, though not through the air, and she gave herself an eight count to get into the rhythm before she started moving. She got halfway through the sequence before Rassmussin made her stop.

“Sit,” he told her. “Have some water.”

“Shouldn’t be this tired,” Alice said, though she took the proffered canteen.

“Last night’s show as tiring,” he said. “You’ve the right to be a little more exhausted than usual.”

Alice shrugged. She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, enjoying the sun while she could.

“Is your mind well?”

Alice didn’t flinch, but she did open her eyes and look at him sidelong. “Hm?”

“You’ve recently been well, it seems, but your bad days come from no apparent source, on occasion,” Rassmussin said. “I’d like to know if you’ve been hiding them, or genuinely well.”

Alice blinked at him, considered it, and then shrugged. “I’ve been okay. I haven’t really been… super on top of things, but I’ve been better than some of those days where I can’t really move. Sunlight helps.”

He nodded. “You’ve been well enough to not… consider something ill-advised?”

It took a few seconds to parse that. Alice shuddered when she figured out what he meant. “No, I mean… I’m fine. I’m fine enough to not be thinking about it too much. It’s not really an option. I’m not letting myself go that far again.”

“Because you refuse to, or because you can’t?” Rassmussin asked.

Alice tilted her head. “Like… I can’t let myself?”

“You can’t be injured.”

Alice suddenly felt herself go very, very still.

It felt like the noise of the camp was more distant than it actually was. The bird in that tree a few yards sounded louder than it was. Her own breath echoed in her ears, and the distant laughter of Rivet and André needling each other again was muffled.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve seen you fall, child,” he said. “I’ve seen you sink into the earth and be forced back out again. You suffer superficial injuries, on occasion, but you… you are Dreen-Gift.”

Fuzzy.

Everything was fuzzy.

Her heart was pounding so loud that she wondered how nobody else could hear it.

“Breathe.”

“I—” she tried. She couldn’t finish the sentence. “I can’t—”

She tried to breathe. She couldn’t. Every breath was immediately forced out again, every second had a new one, in and out and in and out and she was hyperventilating again, wasn’t she?

“I’m the only one that has guessed,” Rassmussin told her. “You’ve been here for eight months, and you’ve hid it well, but you cannot hide forever, no more than we can hide that we are Sparks.”

Alice sucked in a breath and held it, clapping her hands over her mouth and trying very hard not to let herself keep hyperventilating.

“I haven’t told anyone,” Rassmussin said. He hesitated, and then sat next to her and put a hand on her shoulder. “But you should.”

Alice took her hands off her mouth for just long enough to choke out, “Stop!”

He looked at her, unimpressed.

Eyes squeezed shut, Alice rocked herself back and forth, doing her best to control her breathing and not panic herself into pain again.

“Are you alright?”

_“Clearly not!”_

Rassmussin jerked away.

Had she ever yelled at him like that before? She didn’t remember doing so. This might have really been the first time she’d snapped at him. Great, one more problem, one more mistake, she’d only managed to keep him from getting angry at her by following orders as best she could and not talking back, maybe whining at most, not—

“Alice, your hands.”

She opened her eyes and looked down.

Her fingers were phasing. Palm, too, even a little bit of the wrist. It seemed to end at the joint but that wouldn’t last, it wouldn’t stop just there, she was going to freak and panic and quantum shift until there was no chance of hiding it, and then everyone would _know_ and she’d get _kicked out_ and—

Calloused hands, worn with over a decade of living on the road and walking with a cane, grabbed her forearms.

“Look at me,” Rassmussin demanded. “You are not in trouble. You are here for a reason. Nobody will doubt that. They will want to know why you didn’t share sooner, and—”

“No, no, no, Gifts are signs of war, we’re signs of big, important happenings and we’re useful to courts and to kings, but to people on the street  we’re just bad signs, we’re—we’re _magpies_ , or something, and—”

“You’ve brought us protection,” Rassmussin said.

Alice faltered.

“We’d normally have lost at least two or three people over the winter travels, to dangers on the road and the weather,” Rassmussin said. “You made friends with Jägerkin, to the point where one voluntarily followed us for months and kept the less friendly monsters at bay. Payne has been talking to us ‘old folks’ about how Moxana seems more active every time you speak with her. She’s almost back to her old self, now, with how often you’ve been going to her. You’re a competent performer as well, and you’ve certainly managed to build yourself a circle of friends. You are _not_ , no matter how much you worry about it, going to get kicked out.”

Alice squeezed her eyes shut and pulled away, stumbling to her feet. She gripped her upper arms, fingers digging painfully into flesh, anchoring her and giving her a direction to funnel the panic and—

“Stop that,” Rassmussin ordered, peeling her hands away. “You’re hurting yourself, child.”

“Let go.”

“Not if you’re just going to go back to doing that,” Rassmussin told her.

Alice phased her hands and staggered backwards, staring at her teacher with reproach. “Don’t. Don’t ever hold me like that. I—I can’t, that’s not—I _can’t.”_

“Okay,” Rassmussin said, holding his hands up. “Now please sit down. Stop hurting yourself. You aren’t in trouble, and you aren’t going to get kicked out. I’m not angry about the secrets. I suspect none of the others will be, either. Your status has already helped us more than hurt, and if you are here, then I suspect the circus will have been part of the impending events of import no matter what; from a purely practical standpoint, from the views of those who have not spoken with you quite so much as I have, they will be swayed by the knowledge that a friendly Gift saves lives, while a Gift with a vendetta can change the course of armies.”

“There is… so much more at stake than anyone knows,” Alice said. She hesitantly took a step back towards her previous seat, and sank back down. “I don’t want to be here. I love the circus, but I hate living in this world. It’s… it’s so dangerous, and the conflicts are unfamiliar, and I can’t make myself _fit._ I spent years figuring out how to be a person back home. I want to fight everyone here, want to get spitting mad and yell about every injustice I see but I _can’t._ Because there are bigger problems to tackle, because I’m just one person, because my best language is halfway useless, because my influence as a Gift, once I’m more public about it, will be influenced by the PR and how willing I am to play nice with the local customs. I’ll have to compromise on every front to tackle the problems that are larger than myself, and—it’s so much pressure. I’ve got so much I’m _obligated_ to save, and so much I _want_ to help, and I don’t… I don’t even have the energy to get out of bed some mornings. I cry myself to sleep as often as not. I can’t write the way I used to. I panic more than I did back home. I can’t… I don’t _want_ to change the course of armies. I just want them to stop fighting in the first place.”

“You’re a pacifist,” Rassmussin said.

“Ideally,” Alice said. “But that doesn’t really always _work,_ does it? The… the tolerance fallacy or whatever. The tolerant must be intolerant of intolerance. Treating all views as equally valid of consideration leads to popularization and radicalization of violent and bigoted ideals and… um… there was more, but I’m losing my words. In an ideal world, pacifism would be great. But it’s not an ideal world, and if violence is what it takes to stop those like the Other, then that violence is necessary. Violence against innocents, abuse of children, random acts of scientific disasters? That’s not.”

“…that’s not going to be a popular view among those in power,” Rassmussin told her.

“It never is,” Alice said.

He eyed her steadily, and then lowered himself back into the seat next to her. “You have, as far as I can tell, a good heart. You have a good head on your shoulders, when it isn’t sabotaging you.”

Alice laughed, watery but genuine.

“You are here for a reason,” he said. “I can’t imagine you’re allowed to tell me more than you already have, but I trust that you are here to help us. And I choose to believe that you like us all enough that you will go beyond the bounds of your duty to keep us, the circus as a whole, safer than we would be otherwise.”

Alice rubbed at her eyes with the back of one arm. “Just what every girl wants to hear.”

He put an arm around her shoulders, and she stiffened. He smelled like the pipe he sometimes smoked, the burned tobacco clinging to his beard, and a little like the peaches they’d had with lunch. He was also the elderly man that had been teaching her to dance, _really_ dance, for over half a year.

“I will keep your secrets,” he said. “As I have before.”

“Hm?”

“I knew of your sexuality before the rest of the circus did,” he said, and laughed when she startled. “You were not subtle, child.”

“Nobody _else_ figured it out.”

“Nobody?”

“Benjamin doesn’t count. He’s got bi-fi.”

“I won’t pretend to know what that means.”

“It’s like gaydar, but for bis.”

“I still don’t know what that means,” Rassmussin said. “And I won’t pretend to. You are young and clever and you care. I will keep the secret, but I urge you to tell someone soon. If nothing else, we can give you some combat training; someone who _cannot_ die would be invaluable.”

“…I’ll think about it.”

“And even if you don’t, for whatever reason, it would make _your_ life easier,” Rassmussin said. His arm squeezed tighter around her shoulders. “You catch yourself before you say anything about your home. You would be happier, I imagine, if you could speak without fearing that you’ll share something you didn’t intend to about your home.”

“I know,” Alice said. “But the very idea of it is terrifying.”

“Such things usually are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rassmussin's known a lot of things for a while. He just hasn't really brought them up.
> 
> _Remind you of anyone?_
> 
> EDIT: Please don't explain why you do or don't review the way you do in the comments. If you actually want to get better at leaving reviews, there are plenty of guides online. I know the reasons. I've had them myself. This is specifically me venting about "update soon" and copy-paste one-line reviews that could have been left on any fic on the site.  
> Context! Among the most egregious of examples is the person who left "nice chapter update soon" on about thirty chapters straight. The same four words, every time, on FFnet. I ended up blocking them.


	21. The Midnight Fugue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long time coming.

It started, as many things did, in the middle of the goddamn night.

There was an explosion first, which didn’t jolt Alice awake so much as nudge her vaguely towards a doze instead of deep sleep.

Then came the ground rocking, just subtle enough that she wasn’t sure it was even happening, no more aware of it than her first earthquake in Japan.

Then came the laughter, loud and warbling in a way that could only be a Spark, or someone trying very hard to imitate one.

“Olga,” Alice grumbled, not opening her eyes. “What time is it?”

“…almost four in the morning,” Olga said, sounding almost as groggy as Alice felt.

She tried to fall back asleep, but the laughter didn’t stop, was accompanied by enough clangs that it just rolled through her, and the odd explosion.

She might have been able to sleep through one.

Alice finally snapped and threw back her covers. She grabbed her glasses, slipped on her shoes, and headed for the door to the wagon.

“Wait, Alice, what are you—”

“HEY!”

Alice ignored the way the door slammed. She did her best to ignore how quickly the cold was seeping into her jacket. She ignored the fact that there was more than one circus member looking her way. She just headed for the chief offender.

Herr Flatmo was… ranting, and not in English, or Romanian, or any other language she knew. It might have been German. She didn’t care.

She headed over, shrugging off the hand Delilah tried to put on her arm to stop her, and tapped Flatmo on the shoulder.

“Excuse me.”

He didn’t react.

She put her hand more fully on his shoulder. “Excu—”

He flailed out with an arm, pushing her away. “Not now! My perpetual motion machine is—”

“EXCUSE ME!” Alice shouted. “People are trying to sleep!”

He turned to look at her, lip curling in distaste. “Bah! What do I care for what the masses do?! My machine is going to change the face of physics!”

“Yeah, if you ever publish,” Abner muttered, just barely audible to Alice.

“It’s almost four in the morning, can you _please_ keep it down?” Alice begged. “Or wait until a more normal time?”

He snapped something off in the same language as earlier and shoved her away.

She fell on her rear, tailbone not quite smarting from the impact.

“Alice!” Pix called, rushing over. She helped Alice get to her feet, whispering furtively. “I told you they were all Sparks, I don’t know why you—”

“Not all of them,” Alice said. She didn’t take her eyes off of Flatmo. “Excuse me.”

“What are you doing?” Pix asked.

“Alice?” Olga called, jogging to them. “Listen, I’m sorry we didn’t—wait, why are you heading for the water barrel?”

“Take a guess,” Alice said, grabbing the nearest bucket and dipping it in. She turned around and headed back for Flatmo.

“You can’t!” Pix said, taking Alice’s arm and trying to pull her back. “He’s obviously in the middle of a fugue, it’s not safe to interrupt him like that! He already doesn’t like you, idiot!”

Alice paused, looked down at her arm, and then back up at Pix. “Let go.”

She did, but didn’t step back. “Alice.”

“I’ll be fine,” Alice said. “Trust me, I’m really bad at dying.”

Pix made a face. “What?”

“Also, it’s _four in the morning,”_ Alice hissed. “I’m not going to sit back and let him ruin everyone’s night because he can’t control himself.”

“Alice, you really shouldn’t,” Olga warned. “Pix was right, you and Flatmo already bump heads, you—”

“I’m not going to let him get away with being this level of jerk,” Alice said, as calmly as she could. “He might start thinking it’s _acceptable_ or something.”

Olga shook her head. “It’s not that simple, and—”

Alice ignored her and stepped around. She headed for Flatmo, and once more tapped him on the shoulder.

“Please stop,” Alice said, once he turned around. “I’m asking politely.”

He ignored her. He, in fact, seemed to get louder. Distantly, she heard more people milling about and asking what was going on. She ignored them in turn.

She dumped the bucket over his head, and the ranting cut off with a high-pitched shriek.

He rounded on her, and she cut him off.

“I asked nicely,” she said. “It’s four in the morning. Shut up.”

“But—”

“Shut up.”

“YOU—”

“SHUT UP!”

He stepped back, only a flash of hesitation on his face, and then mustered his rage back up. The fugue was gone from his voice, but the volume wasn’t. “How dare you! I am making strides in discovering an entirely new field of science and—”

“AND IT’S FOUR IN THE MORNING!” Alice shouted back. “KEEP IT DOWN!”

“You are nothing more than a lost, useless little construct, and you _dare—”_

“Oh, I _dare_ alright,” Alice spat. “It’s four in the morning. People are trying to sleep, so keep it down!”

“Or what, you’ll cry?” He sneered. “You aren’t fit to—”

“STOP!” Alice yelled, cutting him off. “JUST STOP. YOU’RE BEING A TOP-TIER JERK, AND WE’RE ALL TRYING TO SLEEP.”

“I HAVE SCIENCE TO DO!” He shouted back. “I AM GOING TO CHANGE THE FACE OF PHYSICS AND—”

"S̈́O̒ ͧ͒ḐO ͑ͯ̚IT̂ ̐ͮWH̒̈Ë̈́̿N͇͕ I̷͍̗T̒̇̃'S̎ͬ ͬ͗̚PE͂̈̊Oͣ̅͒P̱͍͚Lͣ̃̽Ē̍ͪ H̶͌̇OͮͤÜ̑̍RͩͮͮS͑͗̏!̄ͫ̿"ͣ͏ She shouted.

He stepped back.

They hadn’t seen her shift. She’d practiced enough for that, to know how to look normal while still sounding completely, alienly _wrong._ She knew as much.

It was still enough to take a person aback. It wasn’t a Spark voice, deep in fugue. It wasn’t the odd tones a construct or clank sometimes had. It was different and distinct, and everyone could tell.

Alice breathed heavily.

Flatmo’s eyes narrowed, his expression screwing up into something nasty, and he grabbed the front of her shirt. “You—”

“Don’t touch me.”

“—have the audacity to—”

“Don’t _touch me!”_

“—interrupt my work, just because you aren’t getting your precious sleep, and—”

“I said, don’t _touch me!”_ Alice yelled, grabbing his wrist and yanking down, thumbs pressed to the palm of his hand.

He screeched, and with the popping she felt between her fingers, Alice could guess why. She hadn’t exactly _lost_ any grip strength with over eight months of training.

She stumbled back, smoothing out her shirt, and glared at him. “Do not touch me. You don’t get to do that.”

He threw himself at her.

Before he could reach her, though, Master Payne’s hand had found the man’s collar, pulling him back. Alice herself found herself wrapped in a pair of large, furry arms, and only the familiarity and recognition kept her from shrieking and thrashing herself.

“What in the world is going on?” Payne demanded. He looked down at Flatmo in his arms, an expression of distaste just barely visible beyond the facial hair. “Why… why are you wet?”

“She ruined my work!” Flatmo accused.

“It’s four in the morning!” Alice snapped.

“Science is not meant to wait for something as trivial as the clocks of humans!”

Alice gave up on words at the wee hours, bared her teeth, and hissed.

An awkward silence suffused the camp, and even Flatmo didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

“Miss Alice, are you responsible for Herr Flatmo being all wet?” Master Payne finally asked.

“I asked him politely to stop. He didn’t.” Alice wiggled, trying to get away from Yeti. “So I decided to take the next step.”

“That is a categorically terrible idea,” the Countess said, frowning. “A Spark in fugue is often not entirely in control. He could have… done something inadvisable.”

“That sounds like an excuse,” Alice said flatly. “He was being awful. It’s not acceptable for him to ruin everyone else’s night just because he didn’t want to wait until morning.”

“Be that as it may,” the Countess said, with the slow and delicate wording of someone who was no longer sure how to approach something. “The Spark is—”

“Often sociological,” Alice said. “Like half of it isn’t innate, it’s behavior that’s taught and acquired, done in mimicry of one’s cultural surroundings. Not all of it, but enough that I can say that this was _not acceptable.”_

“A little girl, no Spark, can’t even learn Romanian,” Flatmo snapped. “And you think you can tell me what to do?”

“I _asked,”_ Alice said. “Politely, even.”

“You aren’t fit to—!”

“Enough!” Master Payne roared, calming both of them down for a few moments. “Miss Alice, you could have, regardless of your opinion on how acceptable it is, been seriously injured.”

“No,” Alice said.

“…no?”

“No, I couldn’t have,” Alice said.

He waited for her to elaborate.

She didn’t.

Gospodin Rassmussin gave a heavy sigh, loud enough to catch attention, and said, “I can confirm this. She would have been fine no matter what.”

“And I expect neither of you are going to explain why?” Master Payne said.

Alice clenched her jaw and shook her head.

He sighed. “Be that as it may, I will _not_ have my company member getting into fights.”

“Wasn’t a fight,” Alice muttered.

“And while I understand that a fugue may carry one away,” he continued, raising his voice. “Herr Flatmo, she’s correct in that you _should_ be more… conscientious of the rest of the circus.”

Herr Flatmo eyed Alice, jaw set. “As if those days we can hear your childish wailing through the walls are any less disruptive?”

Alice stiffened.

Yeti swore quietly above her, though his arms still didn’t loosen.

“Let me go,” Alice said quietly.

“Are you sure?” Yeti asked.

“I’m going to leave,” Alice said. “And—”

“Running away from your problems like always?” Herr Flatmo spat. “Or maybe you’re ready to share what it is that you were running from before you joined us—”

“LET ME GO!” Alice yelled, thrashing.

Yeti pulled her backwards from Flatmo, almost carrying her. Payne was saying something, but Alice couldn’t hear him.

Flatmo had just—she’d lost _everything_ and he would—he just—

She could feel herself slipping through Yeti’s arms, too thin and squirmy and covered in fabric to be held easily, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t—

She phased.

(The fire wasn’t the best lighting, really, and there was so much going on, and she’d gotten so used to pulling it in as tight and hidden as she could, just in case she phased in reaction to a small danger and had to hide that too, and… well, someone might have seen what she’d done, but she doubted it.)

She flickered downwards and landed on the floor, and was on her feet and striding forward with long, heavy stomps towards Payne and Flatmo.

“How did she—”

“I don’t know! I had her!”

Alice saw the Countess fiddling with something out of the corner of her eye, but she ignored it. She leaned forward, her face inches away from Flatmo’s, and didn’t think about the fact that there was a lump in her throat, or that her voice wobbled, or that her cheeks were already wet. She didn’t raise a hand to slap him. She wanted to, though.

“Don’t you dare _ever_ bring that up,” she said. “You’re… you’re _such_ an asshole, you know that? I don’t even swear, so you know that’s gotta be bad, right? So yeah. You’re a terrible person. Your choice in an argument about your actions was to hit the buttons you knew would hurt most. You don’t get to use neurodivergence as an excuse for being awful. Almost a dozen Sparks in the circus, and you’re the one that routinely makes me feel terrible. You don’t get to pretend that your Spark is why. You do it when you’re not fuguing. I have met so many people like you. Almost none of them were Sparks. Just small, self-important, awful people who didn’t want to see past their own noses or admit that their behavior wasn’t okay.”

“You—!”

“Yes,” Alice cut him off. “I. Me. The girl you don’t like, you look down on, you make fun of. Me. I’m right here. I’m not okay. And I’m telling you to knock it off.”

He leaned as far away from her as he could with Payne at his back. “Your breath—”

“I woke up,” Alice said through gritted teeth. “At four in the morning. And that’s your fault. So shut up, take some responsibility for your actions, and be an _adult_ instead of a _whiny manchild who can’t be bothered to admit that other people have needs that aren’t superseded by his own!”_

He kept glaring at her.

“Alice,” Olga said, taking her arm and tugging her back. “Alice, let’s just go back to bed. He’s—he’s not worth it.”

“I’ll come with,” Pix said, putting a hand on Alice’s shoulder and turning her away from the rest. “Come on.”

Alice let them lead her back to Olga’s wagon.

Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

o.o.o.o.o

Alice woke up slowly, meandering and groggy, but better than some days.

There was someone in the bed with her.

What had—right, Pix. She’d insisted on coming with, just in case. Olga was in the other bed.

She wasn’t going to get back to sleep now. Last night was too fresh, now that she remembered it, even if Pix and Olga had agreed when she said she didn’t want to talk about it.

Alice levered herself up and tried to get over Pix and to the space between the narrow beds without disturbing her. Given how small the beds were to fit inside the wagon, it was something of a miracle Pix hadn’t fallen out sometime in the last few hours.

Pix opened one eye, glaring at Alice as she froze and tried not to fall over, and then snorted. “Your bedhead is awful.”

Alice smiled, the expression weak as wet tissue paper. “Yeah, that happens.”

She hopped a little to maintain her balance as she got into the gap between the beds, and Pix sat up, stretching.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Pix asked.

“…not really,” Alice said. “But you’re going to have the same questions as anyone else, so… might as well wait and get it all over with at once.”

“How many of those questions are going to have an answer?” Pix asked.

Alice shrugged, moving to dig through her little chest of daywear. “Not all of them.”

“Of course not.”

Olga rolled out of bed with a groan, and started getting ready herself. Pix slipped out, heading for the Baba Yaga to get dressed herself.

“You okay?” Olga asked.

Alice shrugged. “I will be.”

“Need to talk before we go out?”

“…no.”

“Want to talk about something else?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

By the time they got to the breakfast ring, most of the camp was already sitting around and eating. Stilted conversations went on around them, people shooting looks their way that they clearly hoped wouldn’t be noticed. Alice grabbed a bowl of kačamak, took a seat, and waited.

Pix was, as expected, the first to say something. “Okay, I need to ask one thing.”

“Shoot.”

“When I asked you if there were Sparks in the circus, you said no,” Pix said. “Which, obviously, ended up being wrong, but were you lying or just wrong?”

Alice shrugged, trying not to feel put on the spot. People were whispering all around. She told herself it was just translations from English to Romanian, since she wasn’t bothering. “I was… rules-lawyering.”

Pix wrinkled her nose. “You were what?”

“Well, what you asked was ‘they’re all Sparks, aren’t they?’ and they’re not _all_ Sparks, just some of them,” Alice said. She shot Pix a grin. “I ain’t no snitch.”

“You—!” Pix’s face went red, and then she shook her head. “Okay, fine. Whatever.”

“Wasn’t my secret to tell,” Alice said. “Sorry.”

“I get it,” Pix said.

“So,” Yeti interrupted. “How long _have_ you known?”

Alice blinked. “That the circus has a bunch of Sparks?”

“Yeah.”

“Since the day I got here.”

At least three people choked on what they were eating.

Alice blinked and tried not to smile.

“You _what,”_ Master Payne demanded.

Alice shrugged, biting her lip. “I’ve known pretty much since I got here.”

“You’ve known for almost nine months,” Olga said, sounding just a little faint. “And you never _said_ anything?!”

Alice couldn’t stop the smile anymore. “You never _asked.”_

“That’s seriously your excuse?” Olga demanded.

“Well, you guys were trying really hard to hide it,” Alice said. “And I thought that if I said something too early, you’d find a way to get rid of me. And then I thought it was too late to say something without it being super awkward. And I just kept waiting and waiting for someone to actually bring it up, and nobody _did_ , and I just… at that point it was kind of funny to just wait and see when someone would finally say it. And nobody did. I was wondering just how stupid you thought I was, that you guys kept just… assuming I didn’t know? Or maybe that you’d realized I knew and didn’t want to say anything because it was too late to say something for you guys, too.”

“You think too much,” Pix told her.

Alice shrugged and took a bite of her breakfast.

“How did you know?” Yeti asked.

Alice shrugged, making a face. She chewed slowly, stalling, and finally said, “You’re subtle in towns, but you’re not as subtle in the wastelands. I was quiet enough back then that people just didn’t notice me, as often as not. And Sparks tend to be _very shouty.”_

Master Payne took off his pince-nez and pinched the brow of his nose. “So all that effort was wasted.”

“…yeah, a little,” Alice admitted. “It _was_ kind of funny when people kept letting more and more Spark stuff show in front of me and getting confused about why I never reacted.”

“You played us,” Olga accused.

“You played yourselves,” Alice said flatly. “You _could_ have just said something.”

“It’s tradition,” the Countess said, as gently as she could. “For us to only consider someone a full member of the circus after they’ve, of their own skill and volition, found out that particular secret.”

Alice nodded slowly, and then said, “Honestly I still can’t regret it, some of your faces were _really_ funny.”

“And how do we know you’re not lying?” Flatmo demanded. “You may have only found out a few days ago, and—”

“She’s telling the truth,” Rassmussin interrupted. “I can confirm that much.”

“So can Moxana,” Alice said. “Which, uh, yeah. I’ve been talking to her a _lot.”_

“Wait, Moxana?” Pix asked. “I thought she was just a puppet?”

Abner groaned lowly. “Right. I’ll… explain that later.”

“How about now?” Pix asked, crossing her arms and legs and staring him down.

“So you’ve known many Sparks before?” Yeti interrupted.

“What?” Alice asked. The question hit her, and she shook her head. “No, sorry, not really.”

Flatmo was still giving her the stinkeye. Whatever. He could go suck an egg.

Wait, no, she’d dumped a bucket of water on him. That was probably worth an apology, even if nothing else was.

“You,” Alice said, pointing at him. She paused to make sure he was paying attention, and then said, “I’m sorry for dumping the bucket on you.”

He jerked back like she’d slapped him.

“Not for the rest, though, you were being deliberately aggravating and I’m not letting that slide.”

“You…” Flatmo said, grinding his teeth, and then glanced at Payne and subsided. “Very well.”

“Anyway…” Abner said, looking between the two like he was expecting one to attack the other out of the blue. “I do have at least one more clarifying question.”

“Yeah?”

“Yesterday, when he called you a construct, you didn’t… deny it?” Abner said, as carefully as he could. “If you’re not against sharing, then…”

“I’m…” Alice trailed off, squirming a little. “I’m… not sure. I think it’s debatable.”

“…debatable _how?”_ Pix asked.

Alice looked down at her food, picking at it with her spoon. “Changes were made to my body, and without my permission. Whether those changes were of a nature that would qualify me as a construct is… unclear.”

“What were the changes?” Yeti asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But—” Abner tried.

“I _don’t_ want to talk about it,” Alice snapped. “I’m… listen, the way I got the way I am was one of the most traumatizing things I’ve ever experienced. Probably _the_ most traumatizing thing. I might tell you eventually, but I _absolutely_ don’t want to talk about it. _Please_ stop asking.”

Olga put her hand on Alice’s knee and squeezed. Reassuring, or at least intended to be.

Alice closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “And regarding the other thing from last night, I did _not_ run away. I was taken. I did not have a choice. I’m making the best of it now, but I have lost _everything_ and I’m never, ever going to get any of it back. I don’t get to go home. I’ve run from problems before, but that is _not_ why I joined the circus.”

Olga transitioned to a full side hug. Alice leaned into it.

“If there aren’t any more questions?” Master Payne said, and then sighed heavily when nobody moved to say anything. “We’ll be setting out in fifteen minutes. Finish up and get packing.”

Alice tried to eat her breakfast, but her throat seemed to be of the opinion that foreign objects weren’t particularly welcome today. She managed maybe half of what was left, and then there were three bites in the bowl and she couldn’t finish.

“We can give it to the horses,” Olga assured her. “Or I can take it, I’m still a little hungry.”

“Go for it,” Alice said.

A large weight settled next to her. Yeti hesitated, Lars and Benjamin hovering a few feet away and looking supremely awkward, and then said, “If you ever need to talk about the construct thing… well, I’d understand better than most.”

“Thanks,” Alice said. “Maybe someday. Not yet.”

“I was translating for those two,” Yeti said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at Benjamin and Lars. “And, um, you _definitely_ have no issues with Sparks on the whole, right?”

Alice snorted. “I’m holding Sparks to the same standards as everyone else, with even a little leeway for neurodivergent tendencies like hyperfocus and manic cycles. I’ve gotten carried away at weird hours and woken people up before too. It drove my family crazy. The problem wasn’t that he was doing science, it was that he was being incredibly, unnecessarily loud about it, and refused to even consider making adjustments when told that it was causing other people trouble.”

Yeti nodded slowly, and then said, “You know, it’s still strange to see how much more… verbose you are, when you’re speaking English.”

Alice rolled her eyes. “Congrats, I’m faster and have more words in the language I grew up with and did all my schooling in.”

“It’s just funny, that’s all,” Yeti said. “Especially when you start talking so fast that you trip over your words and crash.”

Alice stuck her tongue out at him.

 _“I can’t say I’m surprised,”_ Benjamin said. _“Given the other secret you were keeping, I’m not surprised you figured it was best to just never bring it up.”_

 _“Well, if I don’t dig into your secrets, you don’t dig into mine, yes,”_ Alice said. _“Or something like that.”_

He held out a hand, pulling her to her feet and not even hesitating to swing her up and around when she launched herself with the momentum. It took a few seconds of half-planned pose changes for Alice to be set down on Benjamin’s other side, the man himself frowning down at her.

 _“You love me,”_ Alice stated.

His faced twitched a little towards a smile. _“You’re one of my closest friends these days, yes.”_

 _“Say it back,”_ Alice insisted.

_“You never said it.”_

_“I love you,”_ Alice said, with zero hesitation. _“Now say it back.”_

He rolled his eyes, reached out, and _ruffled her hair._ She squeaked and immediately tried to pat it down. _“Yes, fine, I love you too._ ”

“Ha!”

 _“That’s adorable,”_ Olga told them.

 _“Sweet as sugar,”_ Lars agreed.

That was all the warning Alice got before the two of them launched themselves forward and snapped Alice and Benjamin into a tight group hug. Yeti joined in just seconds later.

“MAYDAY!” Alice yelled, not even trying to get out.

 _“You’re trapped,”_ Lars told her.

She laughed.

 _“Pix, get over here!”_ Olga called.

“I’m coming, I’m coming…” Pix groused, not even trying to hide the smile on her own face. She let Yeti pull her in, got her face shoved into Olga’s hair for her trouble, and didn’t leave until Master Payne gave the five-minute call.

o.o.o.o.o

During lunch, Yeti came back to Alice’s side and sat down. “I remembered a question.”

Alice looked at him and quirked a brow. She swallowed the bite of her sandwich and said, “Okay, then. What’s up?”

“I didn’t… actually figure out how you got away from me last night,” Yeti admitted. “You just…got out? And I’ve held a lot of people like that, usually in fights, so…”

“Bar fights, he means,” Olga told her. “Drunk guys like to go for him because they think they can take him, and if they do, then they’ll get bragging rights since he’s big.”

“I know,” Alice said. “And the answer is just… I’m wriggly.”

Yeti eyed her doubtfully.

“I’m small and flexible,” Alice said. “And… as much as I hate to admit it, some of what happened to me the last time someone gave me a job means I’m a lot better at getting out of that sort of thing than I used to be. So you can thank them, I guess.”

He hesitated, and nodded. “Okay. I’ll take the hint.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

Olga waited until Alice had gotten up to go talk to Herr Helios before she turned to Yeti and said, in panicked, dialectical Romanian, “Okay so—”

 _“What did she mean by that?”_ Yeti hissed.

“Construct thing?” Olga asked. “Maybe she’s just. Slipperier than most humans?”

“Or did she mean she’s had _practice_ getting out of tight spaces?” Yeti asked.

Olga swallowed. Her eyes were wide, cheeks tight with the anxiousness of realization. “I was trying not to think about that option.”

“She said she holds Sparks to the same standards, refuses to talk about what made her _maybe_ a construct, and hates being reminded of what she did before she joined us,” Yeti said. “She was _taken,_ she said. If that doesn’t involve at least a few manacles and cages and escape attempts—”

“Shut up, she’ll hear you!” Olga hissed. “You… fine. It might be an option. But she hates talking about it, and she’d probably hate us theorizing. She’ll tell us when she’s ready, right?”

Yeti glanced off after Alice, who’d pounced on Benjamin and had gotten to standing on one of his shoulders so she could look at the roof of the nearest wagon.

“Right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeet


	22. The Calm Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are quiet... for a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No apologies. Life just happens sometimes.

“Don’t come to a complete stop. Slow it down and then sway it back to the supposed endpoint, because that gives the impression of machinery that has stopped moving but is still, due to inertia and momentum and all that, being pulled a little further.”

Pix gave Alice a dirty look. “Stop talking.”

“…okay,” Alice said.

Pix frowned and tried again, once again moving too rigidly to give the impression of either machinery or fluid organic dancing, ending up in the incredibly awkward middle point.

She dropped her arms with a huff. “Is there another angle we could try?”

Alice bit her lip, tilting her head and staring at the ground. “We could do it the long way?”

“Which is?”

“Learning a different, related dancing style first and then sliding sideways into this one.”

Pix put her face in her hands. “I don’t like the way you use words.”

“…why?”

“If I think about it, it makes sense, but when you use a word like ‘sliding’ in the context of learning something like that, it’s just… odd.” Pix snorted.  “It takes a second for me to realize what you mean.”

“I’ll try to be more straightforward,” Alice said. She closed her eyes and took a breath, and then stood with her feet shoulder-width apart, arms out to her sides. “This starts out a little oddly. Stand like I am.”

Pix did so.

“Okay, so… god, it’s weird to actually be teaching someone this, considering I’m not even… anyway. Tense up your arms and hands as quickly as you can, and then release.”

Pix raised an eyebrow, but did so.

“This is how I learned it, but I’m trying to remember how the learning order went…” Alice said. “Just… do that to a beat.”

“This is ridiculous,” Pix said.

“So?” Alice said. She did a few moves and then took her position again. “It’s how the style works. It’s all about tension.”

“Like,” she stalled, trying to figure out how to phrase it. “There are looser moments, but whenever you see me do jarring stops for a move, there’s a lot of tension leading up to it. It’s how you keep the speed under control enough for the stop to be impressive, you know?”

“I _don’t_ know,” Pix said.

 Alice stuck her tongue out at Pix, and got the same face back.

“Bounce from side to side while you do it,” Alice decided. “Feet a little wider apart, and just… tense up when you go right, relax when you go left. Tiny bounces, like this. Stay on your toes but don’t let your feet leave the ground.”

Pix seemed mollified by this one. Alice kept up with it for a few mental measures, and then said. “Okay, now twist your arms forward when you tense, and untwist when you relax.”

Pix did so.

A little more, letting Pix get into the rhythm and pattern of it, and then Alice said, “Now bring your shoulders into it.”

“How?”

Alice stalled out trying to explain, and then shook her head. “Just roll them forward when you roll your arm.”

Pix made a face but did it.

“Okay,” Alice said. “Now… I think elbows?”

She tried it herself first, bringing her elbows down towards her hips for just a second during the loosening, with a more pronounced bounce, and… nodded. “Yeah, that works. Do that.”

She added a bit of a flair with her hands doing a flowery swap from flat to fist on the way down, grinning. “Yeah, that’s good.”

Pix tilted her head, watching Alice, and then tried to replicate it.

“Loosen your hips a little,” Alice advised. “You’re too stiff.”

“That feels a little…” Pix made another face.

“Promiscuous?” Alice suggested.

Pix didn’t meet her eyes. “Something like that.”

Alice pursed her lips to try not to smile. “Considering what you wear on stage, I’m surprised this is a problem.”

“It’s just new,” Pix said. “And I’m still getting used to the more revealing Lucrezia outfits, anyway.”

“That’s fair,” Alice said. “But I’ll be honest, this is actually really low-key back home.”

“Low-key?”

Alice paused. “Uh. Huh. Low-intensity? Not worth noticing or at least not worth commenting on? Present but not calling attention to itself? Like, it’s mildly sexy, but it’s not trying too hard.”

“What would you consider sexy, then?” Pix said, with a look on her face that said she wasn’t going to try to untangle that mess.

“I… don’t know,” Alice said. “I haven’t tried anything like that since none of the music really fits here… and most of the stuff coming to mind involves a partner… or a pole…”

“A pole?”

“Mm-hm,” Alice said. “But I think that, without a partner or a prop, I’d need some high heels and a lot of floor work. More slow movements showing off flexibility, stuff like that.”

“…alright, then,” Pix said. “But the tension isn’t the only thing for this dance style, right?”

“I mean,” Alice said, dithering. “It’s like… it’s _mostly_ hard stops and isolations and really, really carefully controlled movements, you know? Sometimes really tiny ones, like, the smaller the better?”

“Can you do those?”

“God no, I’m not that good,” Alice shuddered.

“Okay,” Pix said. “What did you mean by isolations?”

“It’s harder than you’d think to move just one part of your body without moving the rest,” Alice said. “Your body is used to trying to compensate for movement with other movement, so that your balance isn’t compromised.”

Pix frowned. “That’s it?”

“Well, there’s also keeping _one_ part of your body still while moving the rest, but that’s much harder,” Alice said. “Here, let me try to…”

Lean forward, elbows out to the sides at shoulder height, hands forward, like a puppet… shoulders back to provide some leeway and…

Pix watched, eyes critical. “You were trying to keep your hands still while moving your chest, right?”

“Yeah.”

“They weren’t.”

“It’s _hard,”_ Alice protested. “And I’m not very good at that one!”

“I don’t doubt it,” Pix said.

“That… I’m not good or that it’s hard?”

Pix rolled her eyes. “That it’s hard.”

“Oh,” Alice said. She thought for a moment and tried a similar, slightly easier move.

Pix tilted her head. “I could see it, that time.”

Alice grinned. “Good.”

“I still wish I could see it with the music it’s _meant_ for,” Pix grumbled. “You keep saying nothing fits.”

“Because nothing does,” Alice said. “I can manage the style to some things; Mechanicsburg Stutterstep has a syncopated rhythm that lends itself well to a variation, but it’s still not… quite right.”

“What would the name of the right kind of music be, then?” Pix prodded.

“…honestly, mostly EDM,” Alice said. She clarified, “Electronic Dance Music.”

“And our chances of finding any?” Pix asked.

“Well, unless you can find yourself a synth or a… mix pad? I don’t actually know what they’re called, but you’d need one to make the right kind of music,” Alice said. She shrugged. “I’m probably not going to see this kind of thing again. I’m resigned to it. We’ll do our best to get close and I’ll adjust for the rest of the gap.”

Pix rolled her eyes. “Fine, whatever. Run me through a sequence. I want to see if I can actually _do_ something now.”

“Sure thing!” Alice said. “…As soon as I actually come up with one.”

o.o.o.o.o

Pix sliced an apple in half and handed one of the pieces to Alice.

Alice tried not to think about germs as she bit into it.

“Well,” Pix finally said. “That could have been worse.”

Alice snorted. “Worse?”

“It’s not…” Pix paused, grasping for words. “The hardest thing?”

She finally gave up and switched to Romanian. _“Not as strenuous as many other things I’ve done.”_

Alice blinked at her. She didn’t know that word, but she could guess. “We kept it simple. KISS and all that.”

“KISS?”

“Keep It Simple, Stupid,” Alice quoted, ticking off each word on her fingers. “Just a dumb thing from home.”

 “Cute,” Pix said. “Want another slice?”

“Nah, dinner’s soon and I don’t want to fill up before it,” Alice said. She leaned back, closing her eyes and soaking in what she could of the setting sun. She’d have to take a shower before bed. Maybe after dinner.

Things were silent for a bit.

“I have a question,” Pix said.

“Mm?” Alice prompted, not opening her eyes.

“How did you… learn that you like women?”

Alice stiffened, and then sat up, eyes opening. “Why do you ask?”

Pix didn’t meet her eyes. She stared at the forest, shrugging. “It’s complicated.”

“So’s my story,” Alice muttered. “I mean… whooo boy. The simple version is that I didn’t. When I was… sixteen, maybe seventeen, I believed that I felt no sexual or romantic attraction. That held true for five years, and then I had a close friendship with a girl I’d met for a musical, and after a good six months of talking things out with other friends to get feedback and figure out if I just really wanted to be friends or if I wanted to be her _girlfriend,_ I took the plunge and asked her out.”

“It…” Alice paused. “It didn’t end well. At all. The break-up and everything that came with it sent me into a depressive spiral that I was in denial about for a good year, at least. But it helped me figure out what it meant to _feel_ romantic attraction, even if some medical issues mean that the whole ‘sexual attraction’ thing probably isn’t ever really going to happen for me. And… yeah. I’ve spent about seven or eight years going over my orientation with a fine-toothed comb and… well, I like girls. I haven’t really ever liked a guy. I don’t really feel sexual attraction, but I do sometimes feel romantic attraction, or at least aesthetic appreciation and fascination? I don’t… still know everything about myself.”

“But you know you’re easily flustered by pretty girls.”

Alice shoved Pix’s shoulder. “See if I open up to you again, honey.”

Pix rolled her eyes. “Do you even actually mind?”

“Sometimes!”

“…really?”

“I mean…” Alice shrugged. “Yeah? It’s… I have a bad history with friends leaning so hard into the inside jokes about strange or embarrassing things I do that they stop taking me seriously or start acting like the jokes about those parts of my personality are more important than, you know, the rest.”

“I did not… realize that,” Pix said. “Okay. I’ll try to joke about it less.”

“I still don’t mind much,” Alice said. “But at some point I might and then feel too awkward to say anything… or feel like if I _do_ say something, people will ignore me because they’re used to joking annoyance and don’t notice the real annoyance, or…”

Alice shrugged again. “It’s not a great situation, because I _do_ enjoy the jokes now, but I know there’s a chance that I’ll stop at some point, and when that happens, it’s going to _suck so much.”_

“I’ll keep any eye out, then,” Pix said.

“Thanks,” Alice said. “So, uh, why did you want to know about… all that? Just curious, or…?”

Pix was quiet again, dropping her gaze to the tamped dirt of the campground they’d set up in for the evening. “I’ve only ever been attracted to a man twice in my life. Once to a woman. It… took so long to develop those feelings, that I didn’t actually believe I had them. I was friends with them for months first, _years_ in one case, and I had no idea what was going on.”

She laughed bitterly. “And then I didn’t even get to marry one of the people I actually _liked.”_

Alice stayed quiet, waiting.

“I didn’t understand, as a teenager,” Pix said. “I could flirt well, and attract boys, and I could _act_ like I had an interest, but it always felt… unreal. Fake. I was just copying the people around me. Every time I kissed a boy, I felt… nothing. Was it like that for you?”

Alice smiled weakly. “I had my first kiss at twenty-one, Pix, and that was when I asked my ex out. Didn’t really have a chance to feel nothing during kisses when I didn’t really kiss anyone in the first place.”

“But you’ve only rarely felt attraction?” Pix prodded.

Alice nodded. “Yeah.”

“…I’ve heard you talking, before, to Olga, and Benjamin,” Pix hazarded. “Is… you said there were a lot of words, for things about attraction that were only a little different from each other. Is… is there a word? For, you know, girls like us?”

“Demi,” Alice said. “Which is under the ace umbrella… um. Okay. Vocabulary lesson time, I think. There are a lot of words and short versions _of_ those words, and a-spec people tend to use the split attraction model, since it usually applies to us more than most people, like… I know it applies to _me,_ yeah? So—”

“Just tell me the words, Alice.”

“Right. Let’s do that. Do you want something to write with?”

“We can do that later.”

“Right. Yeah. Let’s talk.”

o.o.o.o.o

 “I don’t like the fit,” Olga said, looking at the store’s one mirror and frowning. She twisted from side to side. “It just…”

“Doesn’t show off your chest enough?” Lars said, voice dry.

“Pretty much,” Olga agreed, with no shame whatsoever. “Alice, what do you think?”

“You do not like it, so do not get it,” Alice said. “It’s not complicated, I think.”

 “Are you going to get anything?” Olga asked.

“No,” Alice said. “I have seen nothing that I like much.”

“Not even that skirt you tried on?” Olga asked.

“It was…” Alice struggled for a moment, and then gave up. _“Itchy, Olga. It was so itchy.”_

“It’s wool,” Olga said. “Not sure what you expected.”

“I like cotton more.”

“Or that stuff your pants were made of?” Lars offered. “Fifi’s still trying to figure it out.”

“I know. She told me.” Alice rolled her shoulders and tried to crack her neck. _“It’s a rayon-spandex blend with… I think polyester, so… I don’t know if anything like it exists yet. If she can figure it out, though, that’ll be great for performance clothing and sportswear. It’s super stretchy and flexible.”_

“Olga,” Lars begged. “Please translate.”

“I don’t know how,” Olga sad. “She’s using words for things I’ve never heard from anyone _except_ her.”

Alice shrugged and looked back down at her book.

“Hey, can I get you folks anything?” One of the shop assistants asked, sticking her head past the little curtain separating the dressing area from the rest of the store.

“No, we’re good,” Olga said. “I won’t be getting any of these, though. Haven’t tried the rest yet.”

“I’ll just take that off your hands, then.” The shop assistant stepped fully past the curtain, and accidentally jostled Alice on the way. “Oh! Sorry, miss, didn’t see you there.”

“I’m fine,” Alice said, finally looking up and meeting the woman’s eyes.

Oh.

_Oh._

(Lars snorted.)

Curved purple horns. A prehensile tail with an arrowpoint end that she was draping the discarded shirts over. A backless shirt to show off a pair of wings so small that they couldn’t have been for anything other than aesthetic. A fanged smile and cat-slit eyes and pointed ears and _oh god this woman was a tiefling in the flesh._

“Um,” Alice said, eyes wide. “Uh.”

The woman’s apologetic smile faltered. “Is something wrong? Did I hurt you?”

“No! No, no, I’m fine,” Alice rushed to assure her. “I just, uh, was surprised. You’re very pretty.”

Wow. _Wow_.

_Just shoot me,_ Alice thought. _That would_ have _to be better than this._

“She’s serious,” Olga offered, biting her bottom lip in a way that failed to hide her smile at all. “Happens all the time.”

“Oh,” the tiefling said. “I… see.”

Alice looked back down at her book. “Sorry.”

“It’s… quite alright,” the woman said, a little faintly. “Er, I’ll just… I’ll take these back out, I think.”

As her steps faded from hearing, Alice let out a desperately embarrassed sound.

“Smooth,” Olga laughed.

“Shut _up,”_ Alice moaned, dropping her head into her hands.

“You’re really bad at this,” Lars said, sounding far too amused for Alice’s liking.

“I don’t need to take this,” she complained. “I don’t need this from straight people.”

“Want me to go get Benjamin so he can tell you the same thing?” Olga asked.

_“He wouldn’t do me like this, we’ve got queer solidarity,”_ Alice whined.

“What would you do if she kissed you?” Lars asked.

“Panic,” Alice said immediately. It would be for reasons they wouldn’t necessarily understand, but she’d panic.

“That tracks,” Olga said.

“Yep,” Lars said.

Alice stuck her tongue out at them. “You are both _terrible.”_

“Sure we are,” Lars said.

o.o.o.o.o

The woman’s name was Mira. She’d been part of a spark’s passion project to create devil women, quashed by the Baron some three years earlier. He’d gotten the form down, but none of the women had really had the kind of morality he’d been aiming for.

Mira offered them a discount in exchange for Alice’s name and an invitation to the circus.

Lars and Olga laughed at Alice all the way back to the wagons.

o.o.o.o.o

“I’ve got it,” Olga said triumphantly.

“Oh boy,” Lars said, voice low.

Yeti sighed. “Let’s hear it.”

“Do you think she’s upset with us trying to guess what kind of construct she is?” Lars asked, looking over his shoulder to where Alice and Benjamin were doing a precarious balancing act on the roof of a wagon in hopes of having it ready by Timișoara.

“Sometimes I ask her before bed,” Olga said. “She usually laughs at me and tells me to keep trying.”

“…fair enough,” Lars said. “So, new idea?”

“Jäger’s kid.”

Lars opened his mouth. He closed it. He frowned pensively.

“Not sure that counts as _her_ being a construct, though?” Yeti said.

“Exactly,” Olga said. “Nobody’s sure if the kids of Jägers have any of the more… _subtle_ alterations to their bodies that the Jägers have, right? So it can be argued either way that the Jäger’s kid is also a construct, and Alice said that it’s debatable if _she’s_ a construct, right?”

“Huh,” Yeti said. “Fair point.”

“I don’t buy it,” Lars said.

Olga huffed and crossed her arms. “Why not?”

“She said alterations were made to her body without her consent, and that she’s not sure if they were the kind that make her a construct, right?” Lars spread his hands. “So, she wasn’t born being a maybe-construct, but made that way, so the maybe-construct didn’t come from a Jäger parent.”

“Damn,” Olga sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

“Worth the thought,” Yeti agreed. “But—”

“Don’t start rhyming,” Olga warned.

He grinned at her. “She said she can’t go home again, right? And most Jäger’s kids are probably in Mechanicsburg, since most people from other places aren’t really… interested. But she hasn’t been acting strange about the idea of going to Mechanicsburg, not really. She’s interested, but she’s not desperate to get there or terrified of going. I think she just wants to be a tourist.”

“Meet the people and places Dinreel told her about,” Lars added.

“Yeah, I get it, the idea’s a bust,” Olga sighed. “It would probably be weird for a Jäger to be in a relationship with the kid of another Jäger, right?”

“I mean, if they’re going to have a relationship with anyone at all, despite the age differences…” Yeti made a face and shrugged. “It’s probably no different than dating someone from the same small town? There are… how many Jägers _are_ there?”

“Probably at _least_ a few hundred, right?” Olga rubbed at her chin and looked to the sky. “They’re considered an army, so that’s got to be the minimum. Might even be one or two thousand?”

“Sounds about right,” Lars said. “I don’t know enough to dispute it.”

“So if we say that there are enough Jägers to qualify as a small town, then dating the child of another Jäger you don’t know too well, and you didn’t know the new paramour when they were young, then… it’s probably no different from dating a younger person from the same small town.”

“Probably,” Olga said. “Would’ve explained how the Jägers all seem to like her, though, if she seemed like she might be related to one of them somehow.”

Yeti patted her on the shoulder. “Back to the drawing board, then.”

Olga pouted and dropped her head on her fists. “Yep.”

o.o.o.o.o

“Care for some tea?”

Alice put most of her effort towards not leaning away from Dame Aedith’s intense smile and proffered teapot. She smiled as calmly as she could, which wasn’t very, since her stress response meant that her attempts at smiles in odd situations were either too bright or just sad. “Yes?”

“I’ll take some too,” Pix said, ignoring Alice with ease. “It’s not… it’s not garlic tea, or something?”

“Master Payne has informed me that I am not to give that to my visitors without warning,” Dame Aedith told them. “It’s a mix of mint, lemon, and linden.”

“Sounds good,” Pix said.

“Is there honey?” Alice asked hopefully.

“You’re one of _those,_ then,” Aedith said. She did pull out a jar, however. Alice didn’t see where it came from, but it did appear. “Aye, I’ve got some here. Can’t drink anything until it’s sweet, I take it.”

Alice shrugged with an embarrassed smile. “Feels like it, sometimes.”

“Go on,” Aedith said, taking her own seat. “Have a drink.”

Dame Aedith’s cabin was cramped and aromatic, full of dry plants and odd chains and symbols hanging from every hook, nook, and cranny. The smells competed with each other, dry and stale in the air, and the scent of garlic sat heavy under everything else, so pervasive that one could almost get used to it, could almost forget it was there, and then it grew stronger in a moment and dissipated again under the rest of the web of scents.

It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it was odd and distracting and made the noses of those unused to it itch something fierce.

“So… why did you want to talk to us?” Pix asked.

“I overheard you girls talking the other day,” Aedith said. “And I’d been meaning to talk to Alice about something she said some time ago.”

“…what?” Alice asked, more than a little apprehensive. “Is this about how I said I’m bad at dying? I swear I’m not undead.”

“Of course you’re not a vampire, girl,” Aedith dismissed easily. “You’ve spent far too much time in the sun and eating garlic-seasoned foods for me to think that.”

“Right,” Alice said. She took a sip of her tea to keep from saying anything else.

“You’ve also spent quite a bit of time looking at silver jewelry,” Aedith kept going. “You haven’t bought any, but given that you handled a pure silver broach for me once, I imagine that’s more a matter of money than a fear of the material.”

“You were testing me?”

“Well, I had to _check,”_ Aedith sniffed.

Pix snorted quietly. Alice elbowed her.

“You said something while attempting to inform the circus of your interests in partners,” Aedith said. “When you used the slang from Mechanicsburg, you said that you tend to sleep on your own side of the bed, and often alone.”

“Um. Yeah.”

“You know what it means to say you sleep alone, yes?” Aedith asked. “Given what I overheard you saying a few days ago, I imagine you do, but—”

“That was _private!”_ Pix snapped.

“I didn’t overhear intentionally, but you really should be more careful where you talk,” Aedith said. “You were out in the open, girls, anyone could have found you! Even a—”

“Vampire?” Pix guessed.

“Of course!”

“I know what it means,” Alice said, cutting off the tangent before it went any further.

Dame Aedith smiled brightly. “Well, in that case, I’d say you should know that I sleep alone as well, always. I believe the term you used was… aromantic asexual, yes?”

Huh.

That was.

_Huh._

Dame Aedith took a sip of her drink, looking rather pleased with herself.

“So this is about solidarity?” Alice asked.

“If you want it to be,” Aedith said. “I’ve also been… navigating this world for a fair bit longer than you girls have. I know the books and the theories, if you want recommendations.”

Pix jabbed a thumb at Alice. “She’ll take them.”

“I—” Alice cut herself off and pouted. “I feel like you’re making fun of me but I’m not sure how.”

Pix patted her on the shoulder. “You’ll get over it.”

Dame Aedith grinned at them. “Can I interest you in some garlic knots?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is... going to be a doozy.


	23. The Reveal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment we've all been waiting for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains death, violence, references to suicidal ideation, references to human trafficking, and severe dissociation triggered by supernatural forces and battle

The circus was used to attacks. Over twenty years, Master Payne had been leading these people down the roads of Europa, and they’d build their grand defenses with the Wastelands in mind. In the endless swathes of the continent covered in tiny towns and deadly monsters, there was very little as embarrassing for the veteran travelers than to be cornered by unaltered humans.

That said, these humans had some very powerful weapons and pinpoint aim, and had taken out some of the largest weapons the circus had in store, so they were presumably veteran travelers themselves.

It started with an explosion.

It ended with a road full of corpses.

o.o.o.o.o

The first mine took out the lead wagon, flinging Augie sideways and into a tree. There was a sickening crunch that could barely be heard over the debris, and the only reason nobody worried that he’d died was that he screamed in pain when he tried to lever himself up. Later, he would tell them that he’d fallen unconscious from the pain of trying to put all his weight on a broken arm.

It was chaos.

Dust flew and wood splintered as the bandits took shot after shot, and the circus did their best to shoot back. Alice and Olga were at the center of the caravan, with the other vulnerable members of the circus. When one was neither spark nor fighter, one tended to get coddled.

There was a pulsing in her core, an uncomfortable tug from the props wagon parked only feet away.

She closed her eyes and took a breath, slipping away from the rest of the center group. Olga and Pix both noticed, but Alice shook her head when they tried to say something. She slipped into the props wagon, closing the door behind her and trying to ignore the sounds of fighting.

“It’s about to happen, isn’t it?”

Moxana’s eyes slid open, and she held up three cards.

The Winding Path.

The Oracle.

The Hourglass.

Benjamin was going to die today.

Nobody had died yet, in the circus. Alice had been lucky enough for that, though she suspected that Dinreel’s help had been a large part of why.

“Right,” Alice said. She put her hand back to the handle of the door, heart pounding as she tried to figure out what to do. How to save one of her best friends.

Moxana hid the cards and closed her eyes.

Alice left the wagon, striding towards the back of the caravan where the sounds of a battle had gotten dangerously low.

A hand caught hers, and Alice turned to see Delilah holding her hand, the woman’s dry skin cool against the panicked warmth of Alice’s wrist.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded. “You’ll be—”

“I’m very bad at dying,” Alice said. “I’ll be fine.”

She pulled her wrist from Delilah’s grip and turned to keep going.

There was a muttered swear and running footsteps. “Alice, wait!”

“Olga, I just to—”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Alice snapped her head around to glare at her. “Absolutely not.”

“Bullshit,” Olga said, her voice flat. “I am coming with you. If you’re going to put your life in danger, then—”

“I’m not going to die,” Alice said. “I _can’t_ die. I don’t _have_ that option anymore.”

Olga’s expression hadn’t been very cheery to begin with, so it wasn’t quite accurate to say that her face fell, but it _was_ accurate to say that the dismay was almost palpable.

“Let me go,” Alice said quietly. “I’ll be fine. You won’t.”

Olga pursed her lips, but stepped back. “You better not be lying.”

Alice gave her a weak smile that was really more of a grimace. “I’ll see you in a few.”

“What’s so important this time that you have to go out there?” Olga called as Alice turned and walked away.

“Ask Moxana.”

Alice wove through the wagons and focused. The quiet wasn’t a very good sign, especially given what she knew. She stepped slowly and quietly, glad for the dust of the road that muffled the crunch of gravel below her feet.

She kept out of sight once she reached the last row of wagons, the fortified guard that was used as a barricade whenever these situations arose. She crouched down behind Dame Aedith, who was similarly crouched behind a large wheel, peering beyond it with her stake-firing gun at the ready.

When she leaned past Aedith to take a look herself, earning herself a look of worry and irritation from the woman, Alice wasn’t surprised by what she saw. Her heart clenched and her stomach twisted, panging with anxiety… but she wasn’t surprised.

“How long?” Alice asked.

“Since they took Benjamin hostage or until we can get him out?” Aedith muttered back.

“Since they took him.”

“Three and a half minutes,” Aedith said. “We can’t shoot at them without risking his life, but the one time Payne tried to stand up to negotiate, they shot at him. It’s a stalemate.”

Alice winced.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” Aedith said. “You’re not a fighter.”

“I’ll be fine,” Alice said, trying not to show her annoyance. They didn’t know. This was just them caring. It was a good thing.

She looked past the wheel again. Benjamin was being held with his back to the chest of a man in the group of bandits, and there was a gun to his temple. He didn’t look scared so much as disgusted, but Alice could see his hands shaking. A man to the side, dressed in slightly better clothes than the rest, was monologuing in a dialect so removed from the Romanian that Alice had learned that she didn’t understand more than one out of four words.

“What does he want?” Alice asked.

“The usual,” Aedith said. “Money. Valuables. Women.”

“Women?” Alice asked.

Aedith grimaced. “To sell. If they ride fast enough, they can make it far enough East to avoid getting arrested by the empire. It’s an unpleasantly lucrative trade.”

Alice’s stomach turned.

She had an idea.

She didn’t _like_ the idea, but it would work.

“I’m going to trade,” Alice said. Her palms itched and she could feel her heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s. “Me for him.”

“By all the heavens, no!” Aedith snapped at her in a furious whisper. “We aren’t—”

“Shoot through me,” Alice said. She barreled on before Aedith could argue. “I’ll be fine, I will, but Benjamin isn’t as… resilient, I guess, as I am. If he gets shot, he’s dead. If I get shot, I’m fine.”

She reached for the holster at Aedith’s hip and pulled one of the knives. It was old and battleworn, covered in dozens of little nicks and scratches, but the blade was as sharp as any other. She didn’t let her eyes leave Aedith’s face as she took a deep breath and brought the blade down on her forearm.

Her hand spasmed, flickering like a glitch in reality, the nerves buzzing strangely and her head feeling light.

Aedith stared down at the phasing arm, and then grit her teeth and nodded. “I will tell the others, but you are the one that will explain afterwards.”

With a baring of her teeth that had only the faintest passing resemblance to a smile, Alice put the knife back and stood up. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting that distant buzzing pulse up her arm and into the rest of her, pulling away from her own awareness until the world swam around her like a dream, ready to fall away the second something came close to touching her. The edges of her body, her skin and hair and clothes, were still solid, but only just. She was tethered the world, a single string of reality before something put her life in danger and set her to phasing.

“Wish me luck,” Alice whispered, opening her eyes. “Once more unto the breach…”

She stepped out between the wagons and held her hands up in the air.

The lead bandit shouted something at her, but she shook her head. “My Romanian is poor! Do you speak English?”

The man’s face twisted. When he spoke, it was in Romanian, but the standard rather than his clustered dialect from before. “What do you want, little girl?”

“A trade,” Alice said. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. The air on the horizon was faded and swirling, like an oil slick on the water, swirling from the movements of fish below the surface. She shook her head and tried to stick to the present. “Me for him.”

The man grinned. His teeth were straight and as close to white as was natural, and the sight was unexpected enough that Alice was taken aback by it. Apparently bandits got dental. “And why should I trade, when I can simply threaten to shoot you and take both?”

“I am small,” Alice said. “I cannot fight. I am a better hostage and… and a better sale.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, is that so? Still, not a reason.”

“Because I’m ready to die if you try that,” Alice said. “And then you will have a dead body instead of a sale.”

“Oh, the little girl wants to die,” the man leered. “What, circus life so bad?”

“No,” Alice said. “I always want to die. It is my normal.”

The silence at that was outright awkward.

“Miss Alice,” Payne called. “Get back here at once!”

“Alice, _go,_ ” Benjamin grit out. “I’ll be _fine.”_

“No, you won’t,” Alice said. “But I will. I will live, but if I leave you there, you will die before the day is out. I’ve seen it.”

The bandit laughed again. “What, you’re a fortuneteller, then? Sorry, child, but I don’t believe in any of that.”

She tilted her head and stared at him. “You don’t have to. My friend does.”

“Come here,” the lead bandit said.

Alice stared at him evenly. “Let him go.”

“I have multiple guns levelled at you.”

“Then shoot.”

Nobody did.

“The circus, they have better weapons,” Alice said, shifting her weight in a way that betrayed her nervousness. “You cannot win a fight. You will not get what you wanted. You should leave, instead of wasting your… your… guns? I do not know the word. But if you leave with me, you will make money. If you leave with him, you will make less.”

The only noise to reach them was the rustling of leaves.

With a low laugh, the bandit gestured, and the man holding Benjamin roughly shoved him forward. Benjamin stumbled and turned, but came face to face with the barrel of a gun.

He held his hands up and took a few steps back. Alice watched him until he passed her, and then shook her head when he turned to look at her. He was… angry. Upset? Worried.

“My choice,” she said, hoping he’d trust her.

He grit his teeth. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

She smiled at him. “Moxana knows.”

Benjamin paused. He shook his head and kept walking backwards.

“We’re waiting!” the bandit called. “Don’t want to risk losing both of you, now.”

Alice inclined her head and started walking towards them, hands still in the air.

She made it to the bandits, hands still up, and turned to look behind her. Benjamin slipped behind one of the wagons with one last worried look in her direction, and she relaxed.

He was safe.

She faced forward again, face set.

The lead bandit reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards him.

Or.

Well.

He _tried_ to do that.

It was rather difficult, when her arm phased out from the elbow up.

“The hell?” He demanded, face contorting in rage and fear.

Alice smiled.

He grabbed for her shoulder, and her entire torso set to glitching.

She smiled wider, showing teeth.

“What the hell _are_ you?” the bandit demanded, backing away and lifting his gun. “What kind of trick _is_ this?”

“Didn’t you know? You cannot kill what is already dead,” Alice said. She spread her arms. “As I said: shoot me. _I won’t die like he would.”_

Her entire torso spasmed as a knife tore through it and slipped neatly into the bandit’s throat.

His eyes widened, and he fell to his knees, gurgling.

The others backed away from her, guns raised, and Alice let her body keep flickering, a ghostly aberration that walked towards them as more weapons from the circus fired at them and through her, no longer worrying that she’d die of friendly fire.

One of the bandits ran towards her, brandishing his gun like a club. She ducked forward through him, spun around, planted her feet, and kicked.

She let herself feel pride through the buzzing wrongness, because she’d not only managed to kick high enough to _reach_ his head, but managed to do so with enough force to send him crashing to the ground. She hadn’t knocked him out, but she’d sure knocked him down.

The others came for her, then. Someone had managed to get a shield up, and it was doing a fair job of holding back the circus’s fire. None of the bandits could really touch her, and it made it a strange, uncomfortable fight. She got in her fair share of punches, and throws, and the months she’d spent dancing for a living had made her strong enough to do actual damage.

She saw the woman with the shield generator. People were guarding her from Alice, because of course they were, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t. Alice would make sure it didn’t matter, because she had powers and she was going to use them.

Her body kept flickering as shot after shot passed through her. They were getting desperate, and Alice’s vision was swimming from the fact that her head would not, for a single second, stay solid. She’d long since dropped her glasses, and in the back of her mind, a distant part of her was worrying about the scratches it would have.

But it didn’t matter.

She ran at the guards, head down, and passed through them without more than a whisper of sensation passing through the all-encompassing buzz of intentional disassembly.

Alice tackled the woman with the shield generator, and the circus took over from there.

Bodies fell, and Alice tried to get up from the tackle. Her arm sank into the ground, then came out again, and then fell. Her knees glitched into the dirt and forced themselves out again. Her face almost hit the ground as her hand glitched enough her elbow to give out, and she stopped trying to get up.

She just tried to get solid.

The buzzing was drowning out everything else. It wasn’t a sound, not really, but the sensation distracted her from the screaming and gunfire, making it sound so distant that she almost didn’t realize it was there.

She couldn’t get solid.

She couldn’t focus.

The sensation made her dissociate and her dissociation made her glitch and her glitching made her feel the buzzing.

Nothing was real. Nothing was there. She was—

She wa—

She—

S—S—S—S—S—

o.o.o.o.o

“Alice? Alice!”

The bandits were all either dead or dying, and Benjamin ignored the sound of Herr Helios making sure of that last part behind him. Instead, he ran to Alice and tried to put a hand on her shoulder, to help her up, to thank her, to do _something._

His hand passed through her shoulder, no more substantial to him than she’d been to anyone else in the last five minutes. “Alice! Alice, talk to me!”

She didn’t seem to hear him, on her knees and bowed over, arms wrapped around her stomach like she was trying to hold herself together by force. It hurt to look at her, gave him a headache that he fought through anyone, because she’d probably just saved his life and he owed it to her to at least _try_ to help, even if there was nothing he could do.

“She’s not responding,” he said, when the Countess made her way over. Someone had gone to get the noncombatants, and he could hear Olga and Pix shouting. Master Payne was trying to organize everyone, nearby but more than a little busy.

“We can—” Countess Marie tried to say, but her hand passed through Alice just as Benjamin’s had, and she cut herself off with a flinch. “Or not.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Benjamin said. “Did… did anyone know about this?”

The Countess’s eyes hardened. “Gospodin Rassmussin!”

He came over, cane tapping and face hard. “If you’re hoping I can help, then the answer is that I truly can’t. I’ve never seen this before. She’s glitched, but only for moments to prevent injury, not… not this.”

“Does _anyone else_ know?” The Countess demanded.

Benjamin’s heart tightened as Rassmussin’s lips thinned with displeasure. “The Jägerkin, but they obviously aren’t in contact. Other than them… Moxana.”

There was a distant ringing. A bell. Moxana’s bell.

“She can help?” Master Payne asked, finally turning from his conversation with Abner about what to do with all the bodies.

“If anyone can,” Rassmussin said.

Payne nodded sharply. “Yeti! Bring Moxana out!”

The large man gave him a confused look, but hurried off to do so.

Benjamin stayed where he was, feeling quite entirely useless.

He’d not only gotten captured by highwaymen, but he couldn’t do a _thing_ to help the friend who’d saved him.

“I’ve got her!” Yeti called, and a few moments later, he set Moxana down as lightly as he could, and then pushed her as close to Alice’s flickering form as anyone dared.

Moxana immediately reached down to put a hand near Alice, not quite touching her, but close enough. Her other hand flicked through her Queen’s Deck, landing on The Oracle and keeping it at the top of the stack.

Master Payne made an odd noise, and Benjamin chanced a look at him. He looked… pained.

“That’s the card she showed us when Alice first arrived,” the Countess said quietly. “It can mean a number of things, including…”

“Dreen Gift,” Master Payne finished for her. “We dismissed the option, simply due to rarity, but obviously that was a mistake.”

Benjamin looked back to Alice. Her face, if he paid enough attention to piece together what he saw through the flickering edges of her form, was contorted into a silent scream. A scream of what, he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t pleasant.

With a sudden burst of movement, Alice snagged Moxana’s proffered hand in her own and clung to it, her hands solid even if nothing else was. Her expression was still screwed up in effort and pain, but her body seemed to calm down and solidify in bits and pieces, spreading from where she kept a death’s grip on Moxana. She eventually slumped against Moxana’s table, the motion heavy and exhausted.

She was crying. That wasn’t surprising.

“Alice?” Benjamin tried.

She shuddered and cringed away from him, and shook her head. Moxana mirrored the motion, and tapped the place her ears would have been, if she’d had them.

Quiet, then.

It took a few more minutes for Alice to stop flickering in stops and starts. She stayed leaning against Moxana, unmoving save for the deep, jagged breaths she took, and the hitching hiccups that set her to spasming all over again.

“Benjamin?” She finally said, her voice quiet.

“I’m right here,” he immediately responded.

She held out a hand, a silent request, and he took it, holding her hand in his. She squeezed, shuddering again with a fresh wave of tears.

“You’re okay,” she mumbled, opening her eyes just a crack and squinting at him. She probably couldn’t see him.

“You’re not,” he said. “Is… is Moxana helping much?”

“Same energy,” Alice said, pulling him a little closer. “She’s… _fortuneteller. Time. And space. Wibbly-wobbly. She can anchor me, because the energy she uses to see the future is the same energy that makes me… the way I am.”_

Yeti translated, for Benjamin’s sake.

“A Dreen Gift,” Benjamin said, after a few moments.

Alice cringed, her entire body in the motion, and Benjamin regretted it. “Yes. I do not… I do not want to be. Here, I mean. I want to be home.”

_I did not run away. I was taken. I did not have a choice. I’m making the best of it now, but I have lost everything and I’m never, ever going to get any of it back. I don’t get to go home._

That was what she’d said, the night she’d gotten into the screaming match with Flatmo.

There really _wasn’t_ anything Benjamin could do to help with that. That was… gods and monsters and angels and heroes. Not an aerialist who liked to cook things in his spare time.

“Do you need a hug?” he offered, unable to think of anything better.

“Please,” Alice whispered.

Benjamin pulled her away from Moxana and into his lap, letting her curl into his chest right there on the ground. He shifted until he was leaning against Moxana’s table himself, letting the Muse put her hand on Alice’s head and stroke her hair. He looked up at the others.

“We’ll set up camp for the night,” Master Payne said, despite the fact that it wasn’t even four yet. “She… she can talk to us when she’s ready.”

“Thank you,” Alice said, the word quiet and muffled against Benjamin’s shirt.

A few people wandered off to help with cleanup, or with dinner, or with whatever other thing needed to be done, but a few came and, with a distinct air of unease but plenty of determination, sat down next to Benjamin and Alice.

Those were obvious. Yeti and Lars. Pix and Olga. Gospodin Rassmussin.

The people who’d tried to care, these past many months.

They stayed that way until Alice finally collected herself enough to stand again.

o.o.o.o.o

“The plot is still two years out,” Alice said, a warm cup of tea cradled in her hands. The entire circus hung on her words. “I can’t say much more than that.”

“Do the Jägers know?” Pix asked.

“They can smell a Gift,” Alice said. “That’s why Dinreel and I started talking in the first place. She realized what I was, and I panicked.”

“Is the circus important to it?” Master Payne asked.

“For three volumes,” Alice confirmed. “A few months. But it’s all early on enough that they probably dropped me in your path to change things from there.”

Flatmo was glowering at her from the other side of the fire. He hadn’t said anything and, most likely, wouldn’t.

“Will your presence endanger the circus?” Payne asked.

“No, it shouldn’t,” Alice said. “I’ve been careful to keep things under wraps when I could. If I do somehow end up causing you trouble, you can probably seek asylum with the empire. I know some secrets that the Baron would be interested in having, and you could… trade them for safety. None of you really cause enough trouble for him to do anything about you, if you’re worried about that.”

She sipped at her tea, waiting.

“I suppose this is the core reason you kept fearing the circus would kick you out,” the Countess said, finally.

“Yes.”

“We won’t, you know,” the Countess said. “We’d appreciate it if you used what you know to help us, but even if you don’t, you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need to.”

“I…” Alice trailed off, hunching in on herself. “I have to think of the big picture. The circus will be safer if I do, but only because _everyone_ will be. If I ask for certain towns to be on the schedule, and they’re not too far out of the way, would you be willing to consider adding them?”

Payne eyed her. “To help with your duties, yes?”

Alice shrugged. “Things that happen later will be easier if I’ve already built a rapport with some locals that are willing to help me.”

He leaned back, nodding slowly. “Not Sturmhalten.”

“Definitely not,” Alice said. She paused, feeling out the words and how the Dreen felt about her sharing them, and then gave up. There was no way to say ‘Aaronev’s already sacrificed his own daughter’ without referencing Lucrezia, even obliquely, and that was too much, too early. “That place is bad news.”

“Oh!” Olga said. “Do—do you know what happened to Tinka?”

Alice’s breath caught in her throat. “Yes.”

Olga searched her face, and then deflated. “She’s not…”

“She’s alive, so to speak,” Alice assured her. “But she’s in a bad way. Tarvek had a good reason to want her, and he didn’t damage her, but once he was done, Aaronev decided he wanted to see what made her tick, so to speak.”

“A _good reason?”_ the Countess demanded.

“To save his sister,” Alice said. “And he tried to pay you, but you’d already left town, and like I said, he actually tried very hard to avoid damaging Tinka. He just wanted to use her as a reference so he could build a Muse body for his sister after a lab accident left her paralyzed. His father is the one that’s the real monster.”

“Oh really,” the Countess said.

“Yes,” Alice answered as evenly as she could. “He is.”

Silence suffused the area, and then Abner broke the silence. “So where do you need to go? To build that rapport you were talking about.”

“Mechanicsburg,” Alice said immediately. “Everything else isn’t too important, really, but Mechanicsburg really, really is.”

“I think we can manage that one,” Abner said, glancing at Master Payne for confirmation. “We stop off every other year or so anyway. I mean, we were going there anyway this year. We’re only about two weeks out.”

Alice smiled at him. It was a weak smile, tense and not quite managing to reach the eyes, but she tried.

“We’ll talk more soon,” the Countess promised. “I think it’s about time we all got some sleep.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET YEET YEET


	24. The Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another pre-storm calm.

She can’t speak freely about everything, but she can say more.

“So can you tell us where you’re from now?” Pix asked.

“Sure,” Alice said. “I don’t think there’s any harm in—aaaaaand you brought a globe.”

“Borrowed it from Professor Moonsock,” Pix confirmed. “Now, _where_.”

Alice turned the globe in her hands, frowning down at the extra continent and sunken England. Things definitely weren’t the same, but… there.

She picked up a pencil and pointed, the tip small enough to give her detail her finger wouldn’t. “That’s Long Island, to me. I don’t know what it’s called here. It’s where my family lived for five years before I ended up here. I spent four of those years over _here_ , in New York City. I lived on Manhattan, which I think has the same name here. Before that, I was in Colorado, which was… approximately here, though I can’t be sure. And before that, I was in a different town on Long Island, and before that, Beograd.”

“So you _are_ American,” Olga said, sounding far too satisfied.

“I grew up there and had citizenship,” Alice confirmed. “But I’m not American in the sense that I’ve got any Native ancestry. And… I know it’s the norm here, but I’d really like to avoid being passed off as Native. That sort of thing has some incredibly awful implications back home and I’d feel nauseous the entire time if you tried to convince me to do it.”

“Well, we already have a Thundering Engine Woman,” Yeti said. “Don’t need another.”

“Awesome,” Alice said lowly, looking away. No one commented on it. She was grateful for that.

“This explains so much…” Olga muttered. “A lot of the really confusing stuff about you.”

“Including why you aren’t sure you count as a construct,” Yeti pointed out.

“Guilty as charged,” Alice admitted. “Even the books I got can’t really agree on that.”

“You’re going to need to learn how to fight if you’re going to go around jumping into battle,” Pix said. She stretched, shoulders popping, and yawned. “If you can’t die anyway, it might be a good idea.”

“I don’t like violence, but I don’t want any of the circus getting hurt, so I’ve been trying,” Alice said. “Rassmussin’s been trying to teach me some. It’s why I could kick that hard that high. Used to be I could kick high, but there wasn’t any real power to it.”

“I’ll spar with you, if you want,” Yeti said.

“Maybe later,” Alice said. “I also want to work on learning how to shoot properly.”

“Bow or gun?” Olga asked.

“I know how to shoot a bow, I’m just, you know, really bad at it,” Alice said. “Though if someone gave me, like, a Kree soul bow that shoots energy or something, I’d probably try anyway.”

“Kree soul bow?”

“Marvel comics, first presented in Young Avengers, made a later appearance in—oh my god.”

“Alice?”

She didn’t respond, just stayed, unmoving, staring into the sky.

“Alice?” Olga tried again, waving her hand in front of Alice’s face. Alice batted it away.

“What are you—” Pix tried.

“Pages,” Alice said, voice distant. “I was taken before the comic actually _ended,_ though I have no idea why. I get… updates, every once in a while. Pages I didn’t stay long enough to see.”

“Oh,” Olga said. “I guess… I guess that’s another question answered.”

“Something _big_ just happened,” Alice said. She bit her lip, swiping pages through her view. “I’m… honestly I’m a little confused. It usually would have taken longer, but they actually seem to have resolved a plot point…”

“Which one?” Yeti asked.

“Spoilers,” Alice told him, dropping her head to look him in the eye.

“What does _that_ mean?” Pix asked.

“Um… so, if you were reading a book, and someone told you the ending, and you didn’t want to _know_ the ending, you’d say they spoiled the ending for you. And those tidbits of information are called spoilers. So if you ask me a question about the future, and I say ‘spoilers,’ it’s just my short way of saying that I can’t… actually tell you. Not because it would actually spoil things, but because the Dreen would be angry and I really, really hate it when they get angry.”

“What happens when they get angry?” Pix asked.

Alice looked at the ground, curling in on herself. Her voice was quiet, as if it could distance her from the answer. “All the glitching yesterday, but… but it’s painful, like someone’s set my head on fire, and it’s not something I controlled or started, or something where it’s just my brain making things harder by panicking and thinking I’m still in danger and dissociating so much that the glitching keeps going even when I don’t need it anymore. It’s the Dreen getting angry and forcing it on me, and I… I hate it, I really do, it’s horrible and I’ve only just barely glanced against it. And… and if I still do it, if I still say the things I’m not allowed to say, they’ll freeze me.”

She closed her eyes, shuddering. “I don’t know everyone that’s been frozen. There’s been… dozens, probably. A few were frozen before they ever did anything, lost and never… I mean… I don’t know their names, or their faces, and it’s hard to distinguish them, but when the Dreen sent me here, they let me… they let me _feel_ what the statued Gifts felt. They’re frozen in time, but they can… they can still see things. Hear them. Think. Feel, though not everything. But they can’t move. Their hearts don’t beat, they don’t breath, they can’t so much as blink or turn their heads. They are, in all ways, frozen in time save for being aware of every last moment of eternity.”

“There is only _one_ exception, and that’s Maxie, and she’s… she was _nine_ when they froze her, and they told me that if I do my job right, they’ll unfreeze her and let me take custody, or give custody to whoever I think is—I mean I can’t decide it for her, but they’ll unfreeze her, and it won’t be as bad for her because she hasn’t been able to sense things, it’ll just be like she blinked and ten or fifteen years have passed, and—”

Alice became vaguely aware that she’d started talking faster and faster, and was now hyperventilating.

 _“What did you_ do _to her?”_ Benjamin’s voice sounded out from behind them.

 _“Nothing!”_ Pix immediately protested. _“We just asked what happens when the Dreen get angry, and she spiraled!”_

Alice didn’t see Benjamin’s response, but she did hear Yeti’s low groan.

 _“Here,”_ Benjamin said, crouching down in front of her and handing her a bowl of something warm and mostly clear. _“You like soup for breakfast sometimes, right? It’s chicken stock with some scallions.”_

 _“Thank you,”_ Alice said. She tried to take the bowl, but her hands shook and flickered and—

 _“I’ll hold it for now,”_ Benjamin said. He sat down next to her. _“Are you feeling better than yesterday?”_

Alice shrugged and held up her hands. _“Kind of.”_

 _“Will you be fine for practice?”_ he asked.

 _“Maybe,”_ she said. _“We’ll see.”_

Benjamin started talking about something they’d do in Mechanicsburg, a museum and some performance that was usually more popular there than anywhere else. He kept up a running commentary, his voice quiet and even and strong, until Alice finally pulled herself together enough to take the soup and start eating.

 _“So does this mean you’re going to start doing more dangerous tricks?”_ Olga asked.

Alice tilted her head and considered. _“Maybe. I am not going to die if I fall.”_

 _“We’ll talk to Herr Helios about it,”_ Benjamin said.

Alice nodded slowly. _“I need to talk to Master Payne and the Countess first, though.”_

_“About?”_

Alice gave Benjamin a flat look. _“What do you think?”_

o.o.o.o.o

“Take a seat.”

Alice did so, trying to ignore the twisting in her gut. Everything was fine. They weren’t going to kick her out. She wasn’t going to lose what stability she’d built. She wasn’t going to lose her friends. She’d made sure of that.

“What kind of tea would you like?”

“Chamomile, if you have it,” Alice said. “With honey?”

The Countess nodded.

Master Payne still hadn’t said anything. He simply sat in place, hands laced on the table in front of him, watching Alice fidget across from him.

The Countess finally finished with the tea, and took a seat.

“So,” Payne said. “You’re a Dreen Gift.”

“Yeah.”

“I won’t ask for proof, given what we saw yesterday,” Payne said. “But I’d like to know why you’ve chosen to stay with us.”

Alice looked down into her cup, feeling out how much she could safely say. “Your path will inevitably intersect with the plot.”

“Can you tell us how to—”

“No,” Alice said. “I can’t. It’s… odd, the way it happens. The circus comes out… more or less intact. More people survive than if… or… no, no, I’m sure of it. More people survive than if you don’t run into the plot.”

She bit her lip. She closed her eyes. She traced the paths.

Olga had died due to the crab clank, but Agatha had destroyed the thing in time to save everyone else. That said, they’d been hiding their sparkhood from her, so they weren’t fighting back as hard as they could. Later, they’d encountered the horse, and had trouble taking it down despite using their sparks, until Agatha saved them… but they’d only encountered the horse because Abner had found it and rode back to the circus with it… _probably._

The Wastelands were dangerous. Life the past few months had made that clear enough. Over the three months Agatha was there, two people had died, one of which was Lars, and the other of which was Olga. Alice had already proven to herself that she could save lives that would otherwise be lost, but she couldn’t claim to be sure of what would or wouldn’t change the timeline enough to upset the Dreen.

So she couldn’t be _sure_ that she could save those to.

But, and this was a very important ‘but:’

The circus would have gone to Passholdt whether Agatha was there or not. She and the Jägers saved them. They’d have lost half the camp there, at least.

And if Alice advised the circus on how to avoid all of that, the timeline would possibly shake itself to smithereens.

Or she’d be statued.

Or Lucrezia would win.

Or… any number of things, really. They hadn’t even met Zeetha yet, and the girl was a major protection against the various troubles that traveling brought. They… well, they were probably _still_ going to meet her. Probably. Alice _hoped_ they would, or she was going to be in real trouble, considering how much Zeetha affected the plot.

So ultimately, it was safer for everyone to keep going the way they were, right?

“The circus is going to be in danger no matter what,” Alice said at length. “Unless you all stop performing and settle down in a big town that can protect you, you’re going to be in trouble. So I can’t say that encountering the plot is going to be safe, but I can say that it’s not going to be any more dangerous than _not_ encountering it, if you have me with you. And even if you don’t… I mean, I can’t promise anything. I can’t _tell_ you much. But I can tell you that canon didn’t do you dirty, compared to what the Wastelands do every day, and compared to what _definitely_ would have happened if A— _ah!_ Okay. Um. If you hadn’t run into the plot.”

Alice pressed the heel of her palm to the side of her head and rubbed at it. It was barely anything, a slap upside the head for almost saying a name, but it was painful and it lingered.

There was a soft grinding sound, rough porcelain on polished wood, and Alice opened her eyes to find that the Countess was pushing her tea closer.

“Drink.”

She did so.

The couple was silent for a few moments, darting furtive glances at one another and tapping out a rhythm Alice didn’t recognize but suspected was a form of communication.

“How much does it hurt you to do that?” Payne asked.

“Depends,” Alice said. “They… it used to be more. If I even _thought_ about saying something, they’d do it. They’ve eased off, let me… find a way to feel out what I’m allowed to say before I actually go and say it. But if I’m about to say something they don’t want me to say, it stings, enough to shut me up, a little warning. A slap on the wrist. If I try to say something, try to fight through it, it’s…”

She shuddered.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Marie tried.

“It’ll go back to what it _was,”_ Alice said. “It’ll be like—like lighting through my brain. Like someone set fire to my head and spine and aimed it into the very neurons. Even after it stops, I’m shaking and crying for hours afterwards. I _hate_ it.”

“I can imagine,” the Countess said, her tone soothing. She put a hand on Alice’s.

“If we deviate from our path, you’ll be hurt, and the plot you need to change or maintain will be in jeopardy,” Payne said, voice heavy. “And if we leave you, we’ll have no warning of the troubles we face, the ones you say will kill more of us if we don’t meet the plot.”

“At least half the circus,” Alice said. “Maybe more. Maybe all. It had already taken an entire town.”

“Which—” Payne cut himself off. “You can’t tell me, can you?”

Alice shook her head. “No. We meet enough ghost towns that it’s not very telling to mention there’ll be a new one, but that’s all I can say.”

“There is no one you can speak freely with,” the Countess said.

“A little more with Moxana, since she’s… not quite tethered to time the way we are,” Alice said carefully. “But even with her, I have limits.”

“At least we know why,” Payne grumbled.

“Oh, and… I don’t. I don’t know if this is really _relevant_ , but. Um. You can ask Moxana for confirmation, it’s not really—”

“What?” the Countess prompted.

“I knew Timmie,” Alice said in a rush. “I—I mean, Lady Timothea. The Dreen Gift of the Storm King’s court. She—we were friends, before. In my old world. I actually disappeared before she did, and she left me a letter, but we had the same canon and—anyway, the letter is with Moxana, so if you were wondering what happened that time when I said I’d just found out a friend of mine was dead, since it’s—I mean, it must be a confusing bit of information, since I just admitted I’m not from anywhere near enough to—”

 _“Breathe,”_ Payne ordered, and Alice cut herself off to take a deep breath.

She held it, hand clapped over her mouth and tears threatening to spill.

“You didn’t need to tell us that,” Payne said. “It—it clearly causes you pain, and so—”

“I’m not _not_ allowed to talk about it,” Alice said, taking in a sharp breath. “It’s just that—somehow, the Dreen decided to pull two people from the same universe. I could have had a friend here, someone who _got_ it, and—and she’s dead. She’s _been_ dead for, what, two hundred years?”

“It was cruel,” the Countess assured her.

“The entire Dreen Gift _thing_ is cruel!” Alice said, throwing her hands up in the air and falling backwards against the seatback. “They pull people from their home dimensions with no choice or warning, shove them into a world ten times more dangerous with _massive_ ethical violations around every corner, just as the norm, and then put us in a position where we have no freedom to help the people we want to help in the most efficient manner because we’ll be _punished_ if we do, and they don’t even give us _guidelines_ for what they _actually_ want us to do! I can _guess_ at what my end goal is supposed to be, but nobody ever actually thought to _tell_ me! I’m flying blind and there’s nothing I can actually do about it!”

She pressed her fists against her eyes and tried to control her breathing. Every breath was like a knife through her throat, too cold and dry and sharp to be comforting, but nothing she could stop. Her body was convinced she wasn’t getting enough air through her sobs, and insisted on fixing that with a healthy dose of hyperventilation.

“This is a major contributing factor to your mental health issues,” the Countess said, with the air of a woman who’d realized this fairly recently, and had only just had it fully confirmed.

“No duh,” Alice hiccupped. “Can’t imagine most people would go through this bs without getting anxiety or depression or something even worse.”

“We could talk about medication again,” the Countess said quietly.

Alice shuddered. “No, not with how untested most of the stuff is right now. I mean, half the stuff I’ve seen for colds has cocaine or meth or morphine in it.”

“…I see we’ll have to have a talk about what you remember on that front,” the Countess said, sounding a little faint. “All of those are considered bad in your time, then?”

“Morphine is… acceptable as a painkiller, but highly addictive,” Alice said. “So it’s only really used for extreme cases. As far as I know, cocaine and methamphetamines are considered among the most dangerous recreational drugs. Addictive and with terrible side effects. The kinds of things that ruin your life. Like, they make your teeth rot, and your hair falls out, and they make it easier to contract illnesses and harder to recover, and long-term mental health issues, and issues with bodily temperature when high or in withdrawal, and _so_ many people die of overdose _or_ withdrawal, and people get so addicted that they turn to crime to afford more, and—”[1]

“You can stop,” the Countess advised. “I—I do believe you. We can go through the medication I have on hand or can synthesize to talk about what tests have been done and how well you know the ingredients.”

“Not _very,”_ Alice muttered. “I wasn’t a medical student. Or chemical. Did some psychology courses, but nothing I remember will be helpful.”

“This world is likely farther along than your own, I’m guessing,” the Countess said. “At least, than your own was at this same year. I’ve read some of Lady Timothea’s journals, and the subject is touched on a fair number of times. She designed the earliest forms of double-blind trials that have been used for the past two centuries, and a number of her theories were used as a basis for later medications, for both mental and physical health. And we’ll be passing through Mechanicsburg soon enough; we can see about checking with the Great Hospital, if you’re still worried.”

“Oh… oh, _Timmie…”_ Alice whispered, covering her face with her hands. Forget the toilet paper, Timmie was doing _way_ more to help her from beyond the grave than she’d expected.

Part of that was probably because she’d been deliberately trying not to think about Timmie because it just caused too much pain, but still.

The Countess’s arm came across her shoulders. “There, there, dear. Let’s get you outside and away from us old folks, yes? I’m sure you’d be more comfortable outside. We can talk more later.”

“You’re being transparent,” Alice mumbled.

“I know,” the Countess said. “It’s intentional. Take your tea, it’s still warm.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

o.o.o.o.o

Alice sat on the ground, stretching. It was fun, really, because it always gave her a little thrill that she could bend in ways she’d never even come close to, before.

She hadn’t even been able to touch her toes before. Now she could do a damn Scorpion. That was progress, right there.

“Why were you intent on that move?” Benjamin asked.

“My sister did… a sport where girls did this,” Alice said. “Er, _competitive cheerleading._ I always thought it looked very impressive, so when Gospodin Rassmussin gave me flexibility training, I decided that I wanted to do this. I am going to work on _bow-and-arrow_ next.”

“What’s that one?”

“Um… stand up,” Alice said. “Lift your leg straight up to the side, and hold it up with your hand so that you do a full split and point your foot to the sky. Okay, now hold it in just the opposite hand and—yes, like that, now put your other arm through forward and then angle it to the side, so that your leg looks like a bow and your arm is the arrow.”

Benjamin managed to hold it for a few seconds, and then dropped his leg. “That one’s difficult.”

“Yeah, my sister never got there,” Alice said. She swallowed, throat suddenly feeling like she’d gotten a peach pit stuck in it, and shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t know if I can use them for the shows, but I like to know that I _can_ do them. It makes me proud.”

“Good,” Benjamin said. He was rubbed his hands against his pants for a few moments, thoughtful. “Alice?”

“If you say that you worry for me, I will not be very upset today, but if you say it many times, I will be later,” Alice said. “If you say that you are sorry I had to help you, I will be very upset, and also fight you.”

Benjamin shook his head and sat in front of Alice. “Side splits.”

She obliged, spreading her legs into a V and letting him place his heels against her ankles. She grabbed his hands and let him pull her forward, muscles burning as they were pulled to their limits. She breathed out slowly, squeezing her eyes shut to try and power through the mild pain of it without doing something embarrassing, and then sighed in relief when Benjamin slowly let her ease back up to a sitting position.

“Teach me English,” he said.

Alice’s brain took a moment to reboot at the subject change. “Wait, what?”

“Half the circus knows English,” Benjamin said. “It’s your primary language. I know enough of other languages that acquiring a new one should be relatively simple. And if you have a very important job here, then I want to understand it, and I want to help.”

Alice hesitated. “I’m… I really am supposed to be practicing my Romanian, though.”

“You’ve been here almost a year,” Benjamin said. “I’d say you’re as fluent as can be expected by now.”

Alice bit at her bottom lip. “Um… okay? Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

“You don’t seem sure.”

 _“You’re a bully,”_ Alice told him, nose in the air. _“And I shan’t be speaking with you.”_

“I don’t know what you just said but I feel like it’s deserving of being tossed into the river next time we come close to it.”

Alice stuck her tongue out at him.

o.o.o.o.o

“We’ll be hitting Mechanicsburg next week,” Lars said. He handed Alice the wet cloth and leaned back against the wagon as she tried to rub off the night’s makeup. Pix was already furiously scrubbing at her face a few feet away, getting rid of Lucrezia’s overindulgent colors as quickly as she could. Alice’s construct-like makeup was the most difficult to get rid of, full of glitz and glamour, and also being about 30% pure glitter. Alice wasn’t sure how early glitter had been invented in her world, but she was fairly certain it was some time in the twentieth century.[2] That said, glitter _here_ had apparently been invented by Barry Heterodyne after he’d heard Jason talk about it a few times and Lucrezia started bugging both of the Boys to try and replicate the other dimension’s sparkliest material.

So that was a good thing, probably. She was reasonably sure it wasn’t toxic, at any rate, and it made her feel happier.

“Ugh,” Olga groaned, pulling her mass of curls out from the bulky helmet she’d spent the night wearing. She mopped at her forehead, covered in sweat. “Remind me why I agreed to play the Valkyrie in this weather?”

“Someone had to,” Pix said. She finally put down her washcloth, apparently satisfied with how clean her face looked in the spotted mirror. “And even Lucrezia’s better than wearing all of that.”

“My Romanian is still too poor to play a character with more than two or three lines,” Alice said.

Olga made a face and ripped off more of the costume armor. “I feel like I just swam through a river full of sewage.”

“That’s disgusting,” Pix told her. “Stop talking.”

“Then you play her next time,” Olga muttered.

“I’ll do it.”

“Shut up, Lars,” Olga said, though there wasn’t much heat to her voice. “You couldn’t pull it off.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do, and besides, you’re too good at being Bill,” Olga managed to get what was left of the near-ghostly foundation off her face. “Alice, need some help?”

“I got it,” Alice said, rubbing at her jawline. “There is too much yellow on my face.”

“Well, you are supposed to be a bird,” Olga said. “Beak and all.”

Alice ignored her.

Olga suddenly swore.

“What’s wrong?” Lars asked.

“One of the pies splattered onto the Valkyrie wig,” Olga said. She groaned. “Oh blue fire, I hope this isn’t going to stain. Replacing white wig pieces for the helmet is going to be a pain.”

“Won’t need it for a bit, at least?” Lars offered. “We’ve got a million plays that don’t need Valkyrie. It’s not like people are going to riot if we skip the two shows that actually have her. They want, you know, Lucrezia and the High Priestess and the Thundering Engine Woman. Princesses and duchesses that need to be saved from towers and stuff.”

Olga pulled a face. “I’ll go back to being the villain in the next show, thanks.”

Pix snorted. “Isn’t Delilah going to be playing Grandmother Time in that one?”

“She’s going to be insufferable,” Olga said. “We _know_ you’re not that old, it’s makeup! Get over it!”

“You are very upset,” Alice noted. “That is the kind of thing I would expect Pix to say, not you.”

Olga stared at her. “Did you just insult me?”

“Did you just insult _me?”_ Pix demanded.

Alice turned to Lars, tilting her head.

He raised both of his hands and backed away, shoulders to his ears in a showman’s display of exaggerated fear. “Don’t involve me in this.”

Alice shrugged and turned back to the girls, hopping up and back to sit on a water barrel. “Olga was mean now. Pix is mean, usually.”

Both girls pulled offended looks from straight off the stage.

“What are you going to do?” Alice asked, grinning and kicking her feet. “Fight me?”

Olga threw the rag at her face. “Cheeky!”

“Always,” Alice said.

Pix rolled her eyes. “I’ll let it slide.”

Alice looked to Olga, who scoffed.

“You,” she said. “Are ridiculous.”

“Are you actually mad, though?” Alice asked.

“Not really,” Olga said. “You were right that I’m upset though. I _hate_ doing armor characters in the summer.”

“Don’t you have to do the Titanium Devil when we get to Mechanicsburg?” Lars asked.

Olga pointed at him. “I will sabotage any chances you have with girls in Mechanicsburg. Don’t try me.”

“Try her,” Alice urged.

“No!” Lars protested. “I’m not going to piss off Olga, she’s scary!”

“Everything is scary to you,” Pix said. She patted his cheek as she passed him. “It’s adorable. Don’t change.” 

* * *

 

[1] This information is… mostly accurate. Modern hospitals use morphine somewhat more regularly than Alice thinks, and she forgot to bring up opium and heroin among the really dangerous hard drugs.

[2] Modern glitter was invented in 1934, in New Jersey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEET

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